Our annual assessment of the 3D Printing Business in 2025 begins immediately. January stands out not due to any single announcement, however due to what number of competing indicators appeared directly. Funding conduct shifted, new applied sciences surfaced, regulatory tensions elevated, and long-running structural pressures turned seen throughout a number of segments of the market.
Taken collectively, the information from January captured the business in transition, earlier than outcomes have been clear however after course had begun to solidify. January exhibits how these early indicators developed into the defining storylines of the yr.
Funding Self-discipline Replaces Hypothesis
One of many fundamental focus of the month have been the 3D printing funding traits 2025 displaying an business lastly stepping out of its hype cycle. The $650M invested throughout roughly forty AM offers in 2024 displays a market that has stabilised at decrease, extra real looking ranges.
Interviews with VCs underline that funding incrementally higher printers is now not acceptable; traders need proof of diminished price, shorter lead occasions or application-specific worth. The continued crowding of occasions like Formnext, with greater than 800 exhibitors, now highlights fragmentation somewhat than momentum, reinforcing that consolidation stays extensively predicted at the same time as previous acquisitions struggled to create worth.
Inside this cautious panorama, defense-focused AM funding involving Firehawk Aerospace’s $60M Collection C stands out as a result of it exhibits the place real progress nonetheless exists. Led by Donald Trump Jr’s 1789 Capital with participation from Draper Associates, Boka Capital and Level Bridge Capital, the spherical displays a protection sector increasing even whereas different AM markets contract.
Firehawk’s capability to 3D print strong rocket gasoline in hours as a substitute of the weeks or months required for conventional casting instantly addresses a US scarcity of strong rocket motors. Mixed with the political alignment of its traders and ongoing DoD partnerships, the corporate sits inside one of many few AM segments with each speedy demand and rising budgets.
The CONTEXT international additive manufacturing market report confirms the broader slowdown. Industrial printer shipments fell 24% Y/Y in Q3 2024, midrange programs declined 8% Y/Y {and professional} programs slipped 1%, whereas layoffs, CEO turnover and delayed capex fashioned the backdrop. Just a few companies reminiscent of EOS, Eplus3D and Renishaw recorded income progress, however these have been exceptions inside a contracting market.
Election-year uncertainty slowed some protection contract timing, but missile replenishment efforts continued to help steel AM. These tales body January as the purpose the place the business accepts disciplined progress, traders reward proof over ambition and protection emerges as the one persistently increasing pillar.
Business Bifurcation Turns into Seen
January revealed how the weak circumstances of 2024 have been translating into structural penalties by way of a 3D printing firm asset public sale. Diamond Age’s sale of 350+ a lot of tools, spanning industrial robots, CNC equipment, meeting programs and workplace infrastructure, made these pressures seen.
The sale signalled that an organization which had raised $58M between 2021 and 2022 and delivered residential builds in addition to a 2023 bunker settlement for Ukraine was now liquidating somewhat than restructuring. The scope of the sale marked one of many first seen casualties of the downturn.
Set in opposition to this contraction, an industrial 3D printer set up milestone achieved by EOS for its 5,000th industrial printer at Keselowski Superior Manufacturing (KAM) confirmed that regular industrial adoption continued. EOS programs reached prospects on six continents, and KAM expanded to 18 machines as demand in protection, house, and medical sectors sustained sluggish, incremental progress.
The month additionally noticed Desktop Metallic escalate its battle with Nano Dimension by submitting a second lawsuit that added Markforged as a defendant, arguing that Nano’s $115M deal for Markforged threatened completion of their deliberate $183M Desktop Metallic and Nano Dimension merger. With an expedited trial set for late February 2025 and board turmoil at Nano, the 3D printing business authorized dispute emerged early within the yr as a strategic software for mid-tier companies navigating the aftermath of the most important AM merger and acquisitions (M&A) saga.
Desktop Sector Belief Fractures
Two separate flashpoints in January uncovered rising pressure within the desktop 3D printing group.
The Prusa 3DBenchy controversy unfolded after the elimination of 3DBenchy remixes from Printables, triggered by a third-party report and never by IP proprietor NTI Group regardless of widespread hypothesis, reignited long-standing anxieties round IP management, group norms and the commercialisation of shared benchmarks. What appeared on the floor to be routine license enforcement shortly turned a symbolic dispute over possession, identification and the course of the hobbyist ecosystem.
Consideration then shifted to firmware and management. The Bambu Lab firmware safety replace prompted a world debate over safety, privateness and entry, at the same time as the corporate harassed the adjustments have been optionally available and supposed to counter cyberattacks.
Critics together with Josef Prusa and Nick Sonnentag warned the transfer mirrored a broader shift towards closed ecosystems and diminished person autonomy, whereas the next extraction of Bambu Join’s X.509 certificates and key by a Reddit person intensified issues round information dealing with and producer authority.
By January’s finish, belief between customers and desktop printer distributors had clearly surfaced as a defining situation for the yr forward.
AI Turns into a Core Power
Tencent’s launch of Hunyuan3D 2.0 marked the primary main AI storyline of January. The corporate launched a corporate-scale system for AI-powered 3D asset era, for producing geometry and textures by way of its DiT and Paint fashions, elevating issues about coaching information provenance, the displacement of 3D designers, shifts in design labour and China’s accelerating function in automated asset creation.
On the similar time, AI 3D mannequin era startup Backflip emerged from stealth with $30M from a16z and NEA, providing an American counter-model constructed by Markforged founders Greg Mark and David Benhaim to show textual content and picture prompts into 3D printable components in minutes utilizing a brand new neural illustration.
Collectively these launches confirmed that competing approaches to AI-driven design have been already taking form, setting January as the place to begin for a theme that will change into mainstream, regulatory and economically disruptive by yr’s finish.
Regulation, Management and Platform Politics
January prolonged the regulatory storyline into the query of what can legally be produced and shared, pushing the 3D printed firearms regulation debate again into focus.
A report from the World Community on Extremism & Know-how recognized the Urutau as a major shift in 3D printed firearms, decreasing limitations by way of a simplified design, absolutely printable elements and unusually detailed construct and operational safety documentation. Paired with a manifesto advocating a world “New Second Modification,” the design sharpened tensions round open-source ethics, on-line dissemination, authorized versus unlawful use circumstances and uneven international firearms regulation.
Management over info move surfaced concurrently from a distinct course as a US ban on TikTok approached. Interviews with producers and 3D printing influencers on TikTok ban confirmed how political selections, platform governance and algorithmic management formed creator attain, group cohesion and business survival.
Framed as a nationwide safety situation tied to information entry and international affect, the ban underscored how digital platforms more and more functioned as essential infrastructure for AM communities.
January because the Yr’s Basis
Trying again, January set the contours for 2025. Capital self-discipline, uneven demand and early consolidation signaled a extra constrained financial atmosphere, whereas protection remained the clearest supply of progress. On the similar time, AI accelerated design workflows and regulatory strain expanded throughout {hardware}, software program and platforms.
Neighborhood belief points and authorized battle underscored that progress can be contested somewhat than clean. The remainder of the yr largely unfolded inside the limits, tensions, and contradictions that have been already seen on the very begin.
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Featured picture exhibits Canary Wharf. Photograph by Michael Petch.
