- Boston-based additive manufacturing startup and Digital Composite Manufacturing (DCM) pioneer Fortify announced it raised $10 million in Series A funding
Fortify — a Boston-based additive manufacturing startup and pioneer in Digital Composite Manufacturing (DCM) — announced it has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Accel. Neotribe, Prelude Ventures, and Mainspring Capital Partners also participated in this round.
This round of funding will be used for supporting the launch of Fortify’s Discovery Partner Program and the growth of the Fortify team. This round of funding follows a previous seed round this year of $2.5 million.
Fortify’s ‘Fluxprint’ technology combines magnetics and digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing for producing composite parts with optimized mechanical properties. This is achieved by precisely orienting reinforcement fibers throughout the parts.
Fortify was founded on research composite 3D printing by Dr. Randall Erb and Dr. Joshua Martin at Northeastern University. And applications for their technology can be found in the manufacturing, aerospace, and automotive industries among others.
With Fortify’s patented hardware and software, users can grab control over fiber alignment throughout each printed part — which allows them to “tune” material properties for specific applications.
“We’ve achieved so much since our founding, and we’re eager to expand on our platform capabilities,” said Joshua Martin — the CEO and founder of Fortify. “With the support of our investors, we will focus on innovation, bring our technology to new partners, and grow our product offerings.”
Fortify’s Discovery Partner Program gives select customers early access to the DCM platform. And Fortify’s technology focus is initially on injection mold tooling for quick-turn, lower volume runs, and high-performance end-use parts.
“Now more than ever before, it’s vital that the U.S. economy has a strong manufacturing ecosystem,” said Eric Wolford, venture partner at Accel. “Fortify is uniquely positioned to help lead the resurgence of American manufacturing by using tech to produce best-in-class parts for the digital age. We’re thrilled to support the entire Fortify team as they continue to set a new standard in manufacturing.”
Even though these applications are not necessarily “new” to industry watchers, early Fortify users are reporting dramatic (10-100X) improvements over trials with other 3D printed mold tools. And Fortify is supplying molds now to support customer applications and will ship beta machines to select partners in early 2020.
Fortify is also exploring end-use part applications with industry leaders in electrical connectors, impellers, mixers, and specialty drones. And these use cases will all benefit from Fortify’s unique ability to tune material properties.
This year, Fortify introduced the Fortify Fiber Platform thus inviting materials companies and resin suppliers such as DSM, BASF, and others to develop high-performance resins in conjunction with Fortify material scientists and engineers.
Over the past year, Fortify experienced tremendous growth and doubled the team and it secured new office space to accommodate the expansion. And some of the notable hires include industry veterans Ben Arnold as VP of Business Development and Dave Colucci as the new Embedded Systems Lead Engineer. And to support the growth, Fortify is going to add several additional team members as they relocate over the summer to the Hood office park area in Charlestown.
“Material properties are the dominant factor driving adoption of Additive Manufacturing across industries,” commented Arnold. “Our open materials platform leverages the world’s leading polymer chemists as they continually innovate. We reinforce these base resin with fiber as we print to gain significantly higher levels of performance. It’s quite exciting that even in this early stage of the company, we have customers buying parts for use in production applications.”
Along with the Series A announcement, Fortify has received multiple accolades such as Formnext Startup Challenge winners (2019), Best University Startups 2017 (NCET2), JEC Startup Booster Innovation Award (2017), and MassChallenge Gold Winner (2016).
