3D Hubs closes $18M series C funding round

3D Hubs, the end-user centered, distributed 3D printing network turned professional digital manufacturing service, closed yet another funding round, this time totaling $18M in Series C funding. With this, the company created by Brian Garret and Bram De Zwart expects to continue to make advanced manufacturing accessible to engineers worldwide and also accelerate the development of the online platform for faster lead-times, more accurate quoting, and structural integrity of parts.

Launched as an Amsterdam-based startup in 2013, 3D Hubs quickly became the world’s largest 3D printing community and marketplace. Over the past two years, more professional engineers started using its services, which brought new requirements to the platform. With the shift to professional users, the company started focusing more heavily on the automation, standardization, and the reliability of 3D Hubs, while also adding CNC machining and injection molding to the services offered.

Today, over 20,000 engineers are using  3D Hubs, working with 250 suppliers. More than 2 Million high-quality, custom parts have been produced to date, many of which were 3D printed. It is now easy to cost-effectively source custom parts using 3D printing, as well as CNC machining, and injection molding, with more technologies on the way.

“3D Hubs is committed to being a radical innovator in the manufacturing industry – building pricing and manufacturability algorithms that are said to have the same potential as Google’s search algorithms,” said 3D Hubs co-founder and CEO, Bram de Zwart. We want to give a big thanks to our investors, and the global community of engineers and manufacturers using our platform. Let’s drive the future of manufacturing!”

After having established a strong presence in the United States (and after a brief stint in Brooklyn’s New Lab , 3D Hubs is now going to officially open an office there to best serve local customers, including Fortune 500 companies. The new office location will either be in Chicago, Minneapolis or Boston, cities that are deeply rooted in manufacturing and have great connectivity to the rest of the country and to Amsterdam.