3d-printing
(18)
Prototyping.io
Prototyping.io is a San Francisco startup (YC Spring 2026) building an AI-native manufacturing platform that turns CAD designs into finished mechanical parts in as little as one day. It automates the traditionally manual path from design to production - DFM analysis, sourcing, process planning, machine programming and setups - so hardware teams can iterate in days instead of weeks. The company serves customers from early-stage startups to multi-billion-dollar enterprises across robotics, AI infrastructure, energy, automotive and defense.
YC Corporation
YC Corporation is a Seoul-based digital transformation company that helps small and mid-sized Korean manufacturers go digital. As an official Autodesk partner, it supplies and consults on CAD/CAM/PLM software (Fusion 360, AutoCAD, Inventor, PowerMill), builds its own YC Smart Line MES, and sells the hardware - CNC routers, laser markers, 3D printers and IoT sensors - to run it. Founded in 2022 and bootstrapped, the company reached roughly 7 billion won in revenue by mid-2024 by focusing on shops that earlier smart-factory programs overlooked.
CairnSurgical, Inc.
CairnSurgical is a clinical-stage medical device company in Lebanon, New Hampshire, building patient-specific surgical guidance for breast cancer lumpectomy. Its Breast Cancer Locator (BCL) System pairs a 3D-printed, bra-like form molded to each patient's anatomy with an interactive 3D Visualizer derived from supine MRI, giving surgeons a precise blueprint of a tumor's size, shape, depth and edges. The goal is to cut the 20 to 25 percent re-excision rate in breast-conserving surgery toward zero. Spun out of Dartmouth College and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in 2015, the company reported 94 percent margin-negative resections in a European study and filed for FDA De Novo clearance in 2026.
Shapeways
Shapeways is an Eindhoven-based 3D printing and digital manufacturing company that lets individuals and businesses upload 3D files and receive custom parts made through additive manufacturing, CNC machining and injection molding. Founded in 2007 inside Royal Philips, it pioneered a public 3D printing service and marketplace, went public via SPAC in 2021, filed for bankruptcy in 2024, and was relaunched in December 2024 by its original founders and the profitable Eindhoven factory team with a renewed focus on B2B customers, sustainability and operational stability.
PIX Moving
PIX Moving is a city-robotics company that builds modular, drive-by-wire electric 'skateboard' chassis and autonomous 'mobile spaces' such as its RoboBus and RoboShop. Founded in 2014 and rooted in both Silicon Valley and China, PIX combines metal 3D printing, generative design, and self-driving software to turn vehicles into reconfigurable rooms on wheels - a shuttle that can become a cafe, gym, retail pop-up, or library. It sells its chassis and full vehicles to developers, cities, and mobility operators, and runs a Robot-as-a-Service model aimed at deploying fleets across dozens of countries.
Factorem
Factorem is an AI-driven on-demand manufacturing platform based in Singapore. Founded in 2020 by Alexandra Zhang and Hardik Dobariya, it lets engineering and hardware teams upload a CAD file, get an instant quote, and order custom parts - CNC machining, 3D printing, sheet metal fabrication, injection molding and surface treatment - from a vetted network of Southeast Asian factories, with no minimum order quantity. The platform uses AI to scan designs, match them to the best-suited manufacturer, and manage end-to-end fulfilment, compressing prototyping timelines from months to days.
MacLean-Fogg
MacLean-Fogg is a fourth-generation, family-owned American manufacturer founded in 1925 that grew from a single railroad lock nut into a global maker of fasteners, engineered components, plastics, and additive-manufacturing tooling. Headquartered in Mundelein, Illinois, the roughly $1.2 billion-a-year enterprise supplies the automotive, heavy-truck, electric utility, telecom, and industrial markets from dozens of plants across North America, Europe, and Asia. In 2025 it marked its 100th anniversary still owned and led by the MacLean family.
Verustruct
Verustruct is a New Haven-based construction-technology company building a gantry-less 3D printing system to make affordable, sustainable housing at scale. Founded by former SpaceX engineer Nick Callegari, its patent-pending translational slipform printer extrudes load-bearing walls with embedded mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, then scales itself up layer by layer, sidestepping the bulky gantry frames that cap the size of most additive-construction projects. Organized as a public benefit corporation, Verustruct aims to cut home construction cost by roughly half and emissions by around 40 percent.
Z-Polymers
Z-Polymers is a Lowell, Massachusetts materials science company that emerged from the UMass Lowell Innovation Hub to build Tullomer, a PFAS-free liquid crystal super-polymer spun into ultra-fine fibers and 3D-printing filament. Founded in 2021 by materials scientist Dr. Michael Zimmerman, the company claims strength up to four times that of PEEK - and up to six times stronger than steel at a sixth of the weight - while printing on desktop machines without annealing. Its materials target aerospace, defense, medical devices, energy, and functional fabrics, and in 2026 it secured a strategic seed investment and joint development agreement with Japan's Kureha Corporation.
LuxCreo
LuxCreo is a digital manufacturing company turning dental clinics and labs into same-day production floors. Its patented LEAP (Light Enabled Additive Production) printers, ActiveMemory polymers, and LuxFlow software combine to deliver FDA-cleared, directly 3D-printed clear aligners, night guards, dentures and crowns - cutting weeks of traditional workflow down to hours.
Impossible Objects, Inc.
Impossible Objects is a Northbrook, Illinois manufacturer of industrial 3D printers built around its proprietary CBAM (Composite-Based Additive Manufacturing) process. Instead of melting plastic filament, CBAM stacks long-fiber sheets of carbon fiber or fiberglass, inkjet-prints each layer with a fluid, bonds them with high-performance polymer powders like PEEK and nylon, then compresses and heats the stack into a solid composite part. The result is parts the company says are stronger, more dimensionally accurate, and printed up to 15x faster than competing methods - aimed at aerospace, defense, automotive, and electronics customers that need composite parts at production volume.
Physna
Physna is a geometric deep-learning company that does for 3D models and physical objects what Google did for text: it lets machines actually understand shape. Its proprietary technology codifies the geometry of any 3D model into searchable, comparable data, powering both an enterprise platform used by Fortune 500 manufacturers and government agencies, and Thangs, a free public 3D search engine and creator community that has grown to tens of millions of monthly users. Founded in 2015 in Ohio and backed by Sequoia, Tiger Global, GV and Drive Capital with more than $86M raised, Physna turns the physical world into something a computer can search, match and protect.
Relativity Space
Relativity Space is an American aerospace company building rockets in a radically different way - by 3D printing the bulk of each vehicle with its proprietary Stargate metal printers and autonomous robotics. Founded in 2015, it became the first company to launch a largely 3D-printed rocket (Terran 1) in 2023, and is now focused on Terran R, a medium-to-heavy-lift, fully reusable launch vehicle aimed at the commercial and government markets. Under CEO Eric Schmidt, who took the helm in 2025, the company is also exploring orbital infrastructure for AI and high-performance computing.
Azul 3D, Inc.
Azul 3D is a Skokie, Illinois deep-tech manufacturer that builds large-format, high-speed industrial 3D printers powered by its proprietary High Area Rapid Printing (HARP) technology. Spun out of Northwestern University in 2016, the company uses a flowing layer of non-stick fluorinated oil to carry away heat during continuous stereolithographic printing, which lets its machines produce human-sized polymer parts in hours rather than days. Its flagship LAKE printer targets manufacturers who want to make finished goods at scale instead of one-off prototypes.
Backflip AI
Backflip AI is a San Francisco-based generative AI company building 3D design tools for the physical world. Founded by the Markforged co-founders Greg Mark and David Benhaim, it turns text prompts, sketches and photos into editable 3D meshes (Idea to Mesh) and converts 3D scan data into fully parametric CAD models in one click (Scan-to-CAD / Mesh-to-CAD), with native Onshape and SOLIDWORKS integration. The company raised a $30M Series A co-led by NEA and Andreessen Horowitz and trained its model on a synthetic dataset of over 100 million 3D geometries.
OPT Industries
OPT Industries is an MIT-spun materials foundry in Medford, Massachusetts that built the world's first roll-to-roll 3D printing platform, RAMP. By pairing computational design software with continuous additive manufacturing, OPT prints micron-precise materials at unlimited length and high volume - producing everything from the InstaSwab COVID-19 nasal swab to flockless cosmetic applicators and false eyelashes. The pitch is simple: one process, endless possibilities.
Make:
Make: is the media and events company that gave the maker movement its name. Founded in 2005 by Dale Dougherty inside O'Reilly Media, it publishes Make: magazine, runs Maker Faire events around the world, and sells kits and books through the Maker Shed. After a 2019 shutdown, Dougherty restructured the business as Make: Community LLC and kept it going.
Stämm
Stämm is a deep-tech biomanufacturing company building a desktop-scale, 3D-printed, bubble-free bioprocessor that replaces the giant stainless-steel tanks of conventional pharma. Founded in Buenos Aires and headquartered in San Francisco, the company is pursuing a vision of decentralized, AI-driven production of biologics and cell therapies.