This week, Glowforge announced it has raised an additional $22 million from Foundry Group and True Venture during its recent Series B investment round.
Last year, Glowforge secured $28 million for its highly-anticipated 3D printer through its self-running crowdfunding campaign. The printer debuted to the public for the first time at last year’s World Maker Faire New York. At the event, Glowforge was awarded three Make Editor’s Choice Awards and made more than 150 prints in a single day. Even though most prints take less than five minutes, lines stretched around the booth and wait times exceeded two hours. Foundry Group and True Ventures both participated in the company’s Series A funding round in the spring of 2015.
Brad Feld, Foundry Group managing director, stated:
“We asked [Glowforge CEO] Dan [Shapiro] if we could double down on Glowforge because we could see from their crowdfunding campaign and from the machine in our office that this was something magical and different. Our firm has always focused on hardware that changes the way that people interact with technology. Also, I have to admit: we really love lasers.”
Shapiro commented:
“I co-founded Glowforge after I had the fortune to play with industrial lasers and see how they could make truly beautiful and useful products in the blink of an eye. This company is built around the idea of simplifying that technology and making it more affordable, so anyone can take their dreams from idea to creation. Delivering Glowforge printers to beta customers and seeing their delight – and the beautiful things they create – is what makes our company tick. With this financing, we can deliver not just an amazing product to the people who’ve ordered it already, but we can scale up our American assembly line to make this available to schools, homes, and businesses around the world.”
True Ventures partner, Tony Conrad, then added:
“When we first invested, it was because of the incredible hardware that the team demonstrated. But when they showed us the gorgeous software, the beautiful catalog, and the high-quality Proofgrade materials that would let anyone be successful right out the box, we knew we wanted to be a bigger part of the story.”
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