Gregory Mark is a three-time founder and MIT-trained aerospace engineer who is rebuilding how physical things get made. After inventing continuous carbon fiber 3D printing and taking Markforged from a garage idea to a $2.1B public company, he launched Backflip AI in 2024, a generative AI tool that turns text, sketches, and scans into 3D-printable, manufacturable models. Backflip raised a $30M Series A co-led by NEA and Andreessen Horowitz, with angels including Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott and 'Attention Is All You Need' co-author Ashish Vaswani.
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.