CARBON

Joseph DeSimone spent years as a chemistry professor studying polymer science and photochemistry. In 2013, he and his team solved a problem that had been holding back 3D printing for decades: speed.

Traditional printers build objects one thin layer at a time, which is slow and creates parts with inconsistent properties. DeSimone's insight was that if you used an oxygen-permeable window at the base of the resin tank, you could create a dead zone where resin would not cure — allowing the print platform to rise continuously rather than in steps.

The result was CLIP: Continuous Liquid Interface Production. Objects that would take hours now took minutes.

The parts were stronger and more consistent. He founded Carbon (originally Carbon3D) in Redwood City, California in 2013 and started convincing manufacturers it could replace traditional tooling.

Carbon sells printers and charges an annual subscription that covers software, materials access, and support. Hardware ranges from $50,000 to $75,000 per unit.

Customers pay the subscription annually, which means Carbon earns recurring revenue for as long as a manufacturer keeps using the machine. The core pitch to industrial customers: instead of paying $200,000 for an injection mold and waiting three months for it, print the part.

The subscription model shifts Carbon's revenue from lumpy one-time hardware sales to predictable recurring streams. Target industries include medical devices, dental aligners, automotive parts, athletic footwear, and consumer electronics.

The M Series printers — M2, M3, and M3 Max — are Carbon's hardware. They use DLS (Digital Light Synthesis), the commercial evolution of the original CLIP technology, to print parts faster and with better mechanical properties than conventional additive manufacturing.

The software platform manages print workflows, material settings, and quality tracking. Carbon's materials library covers rigid engineering resins, elastomers for flexible parts, biocompatible resins for medical uses, and dental-specific materials for aligners and surgical guides.

The SpeedCell system combines printer, wash station, and cure oven into an automated manufacturing cell designed for volume production runs. Dental products have become a particularly significant revenue segment.

The adidas partnership was the company-making moment. When adidas launched the Futurecraft 4D shoe in 2017 — its midsole printed entirely by Carbon technology — and it sold out immediately, it did two things at once: it proved the technology could handle consumer-scale manufacturing, and it generated more awareness for Carbon than any marketing budget could have bought.

The strategy was deliberately industry-by-industry: find one flagship customer in each vertical, make them wildly successful, and use that as a reference for every other company in that sector. Johnson and Johnson became the reference customer for medical devices.

The Futurecraft 4D was the reference for footwear. Every subsequent deal got easier.

Manufacturing is not software. Selling a new manufacturing process to industrial companies means displacing existing workflows, retraining operators, integrating new materials into supply chains, and navigating strict quality and regulatory requirements in industries like healthcare and automotive.

These processes take years. Customer adoption has been slower than the initial hype surrounding the adidas launch suggested.

Carbon has had to manage expectations about how fast factories will actually switch. The $680 million raised gives substantial runway, but it also creates pressure to demonstrate commercial scale — not just great technology.

The transition from impressive pilot projects to genuine volume manufacturing is where most deep-tech hardware companies either prove themselves or stall.

Carbon's investor list is a mix of top-tier venture capital and strategic corporate investors. Sequoia Capital and ARCH Venture Partners have been in since early rounds.

Google Ventures (GV) joined at the Series B. The strategics are where it gets interesting: adidas invested directly after the Futurecraft partnership, as did Johnson and Johnson Innovation, General Electric Ventures, JSR Corporation (a Japanese speciality chemical company), and Yaskawa Electric.

When your customers invest in you, it is either a signal of deep conviction or a way to lock in relationships — probably both.