Fabric8Labs Closes $50M Series B Financing for AM Technology

Fabric8Labs, pioneer of electrochemical additive manufacturing, announces the close of a $50M Series B investment round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from existing investors, including Intel Capital, imec.XPAND, SE Ventures, TDK Ventures and Lam Capital. The new infusion of capital will be used to scale the company's Electrochemical Additive Manufacturing (ECAM) technology and establish a pilot production facility.

"It is critical to have partners that are aligned with our mission to fundamentally shift manufacturing with a sustainable, additive manufacturing approach; and we have been fortunate to surround ourselves with a team of top tier investors," says Jeff Herman, Fabric8Labs CEO and co-founder.

ECAM builds at the atomic level from a water-based feedstock containing dissolved metal ions. The electrochemical approach allows for micron-scale feature resolution, internal features, high-purity materials and rapid scalability to support mass manufacturing.

ECAM is suited to produce high resolution, pure copper components, which can be directly printed onto temperature sensitive substrates such as printed circuit boards, silicon or existing metal components. ECAM enables the manufacturing of optimized designs to meet and exceed performance requirements in end applications such as, high-performance computing (HPC), data centers, electric vehicles, wearables, radio frequency communications and a range of consumer electronics products.

In addition to enabling advancements in electronics—Fabric8Labs is developing medical device applications and micro-mechanical components. These applications leverage ECAM's inherent advantages to produce fine, complex features and high-performance alloys. As the company scales, ECAM will enable applications that require ultra-high resolution, such as advanced surgical tools, sensors, diagnostic equipment and more.

"ECAM stands out as truly differentiated among the sea of approaches to additive manufacturing," says Greg Papadopoulos, Ph.D., venture partner at NEA. "You can avoid expensive post-processing, easily build complex things at micron-scale, print directly on your existing substrates, and do all of this at scale with, by far, the lowest energy—and thus carbon—footprint."

ECAM is environmentally sustainable and supports green initiatives. ECAM enables more than a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions relative to alternative additive technologies and traditional manufacturing, according to the company. 

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.