digital-manufacturing
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SolidCAM and the fortune in 45 seconds
A machine shop shaved less than a minute off a part. SolidCAM’s story explains why that small victory can matter more than a spectacular sales pitch.
Fictiv Built a $350 Million Business Out of the Wait for Parts
Two brothers started with a 3D printer in a San Francisco kitchen. Now part of MISUMI, Fictiv is taking on the expensive stretch between a finished design and a finished product.
Revalize Bought the Software Under the Factory Floor. Now It Has to Make the Pieces Fit
Revalize stitched together 19 specialist brands to give manufacturers one route from sketch to quote. The opportunity is large; so is the integration job.
The Factory Behind the Internet's Oddly Specific Orders
A missing car-wash sign became a portfolio of 12 brands and more than 10,000 customizable products. Group Bayport's real product is the machinery that turns one-off requests into repeatable ecommerce.
aPriori Technologies
aPriori Technologies is a Concord, Massachusetts software company that turns 3D CAD designs into instant manufacturing cost, manufacturability, and carbon-footprint insights. Founded in 2003 out of University of Illinois research, its cloud Manufacturing Insights Platform - aP Design, aP Pro, and aP Generate - lets engineers, sourcing teams, and cost analysts simulate how a part will be built, what it should cost across regions, and how much CO2e it will emit, before tooling is ever cut. Manufacturers such as GE Aerospace, Carrier, Alstom, Flex, and Whirlpool use it to catch cost and design problems early and negotiate with suppliers from data rather than guesswork.
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.
Simr (formerly UberCloud)
Simr, formerly UberCloud, is a Los Altos, California company that automates engineering simulation in the cloud. Its SimOps (Simulation Operations Automation) platform lets design engineers run compute-heavy simulations - CFD, FEA and multi-physics workloads - on any cloud or on-premise hardware with leading tools like Ansys, Siemens and Dassault, without wrestling with the underlying HPC infrastructure. Founded in 2014 by Burak Yenier and Wolfgang Gentzsch, the company raised a $20M Series A in 2024 and counts major manufacturers and tech giants among its users.
Divergent
Divergent Technologies is a Torrance, California digital-manufacturing company behind DAPS, the Divergent Adaptive Production System - an end-to-end platform that pairs AI-driven generative design, metal 3D printing, and software-defined robotic assembly to produce complex automotive, aerospace, and defense structures without part-specific tooling. The same system that builds the record-setting Czinger 21C hypercar now turns out missile airframes and drone aerostructures for U.S. defense primes.
Layup Parts
Layup Parts is a Huntington Beach, California company building a software-defined manufacturing platform for custom composite parts. Through its FiberPortal portal, engineers upload a 3D model, configure materials and ply layups, get an instant interactive quote, and receive finished carbon fiber or fiberglass parts - with quality documentation - in as little as two weeks. Founded in 2024 by former Anduril and Boring Company engineer Zack Eakin, the company pitches itself as the 'Amazon of composites,' automating the slow, quote-by-email world of composite fabrication for aerospace, defense, motorsports and high-tech customers. It raised a $42M Series A in June 2026 led by Marlinspike.
Seurat Technologies
Seurat Technologies is a Massachusetts-based contract metal manufacturer built around Area Printing, a laser powder bed fusion process invented at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Instead of melting metal powder one point at a time, Seurat uses millions of tiny laser points to print entire areas at once, decoupling resolution from speed. The company doesn't sell printers; it runs its own clean-energy print factories and sells finished parts at costs meant to rival casting, forging, and machining, with the goal of reshoring high-volume metal manufacturing and cutting its carbon footprint.
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.