Adaptive3D™, an additive manufacturing polymer resin supplier delivering tough, strain-tolerant and flexible materials, announced that it has secured Series A financing from a syndicate co-led by DSM Venturing and Applied Ventures. DSM Venturing is the strategic funding arm of Royal DSM, a global science-based company active in sustainable living, nutrition and additive manufacturing, and Applied Ventures is the venture capital arm of Applied Materials, a provider of materials engineering solutions. Also joining the round are Chemence, a multinational materials and adhesives supplier, and current investors led by Mary McDermott Cook and the late Margaret McDermott, whose father and husband, respectively, founded Texas Instruments in 1951.

Adaptive3D printable photoresins are targeting the high-throughput manufacturing of complex 3-dimensional plastic and rubber parts, with unmatched mechanical properties, in open-air production environments. Royal DSM and Applied Materials provide the cornerstones of an emerging additive manufacturing ecosystem that will help Adaptive3D as it aims to deliver materials-centric solutions to global companies in consumer, healthcare, industrial, transportation and oil and gas sectors.

“Adaptive3D seeks to challenge the cost, throughput and performance in markets today dominated by traditional injection molding, blow molding and other thermoplastic processing techniques,” said Adaptive3D founder and CEO, Walter Voit. “By delivering lightweight, sustainable, micro-latticed structures with superior thermal, chemical, optical and mechanical properties, Adaptive3D seeks to drastically increase the utilization of plastics and rubbers in end applications using additive manufacturing.”

“At DSM we believe that the age of additive manufacturing for industrial applications is, in fact, the age of materials,” said Hugo Da Silva, DSM VP of Additive Manufacturing. “Adaptive3D’s engineered photoresins enable new design paradigms in end applications. Working together with Applied Materials allows us to think globally about big problems at scale and offer big ecosystem solutions.”

“Applied Materials is a global leader in semiconductor processing and patterning with light and e-beam technology,” said Om Nalamasu, President of Applied Ventures and CTO of Applied Materials. “Adaptive3D’s photoresins coupled with large-area processing and advanced patterning techniques could potentially deliver robust materials-based solutions at high throughput and low cost across multiple industry verticals.”

“There are only a handful of chemical companies around the world with the global supply chain, distribution channels and application expertise to drive change in how the world manufactures plastics,” said Voit, “and we are thrilled to have Royal DSM, one of them, ranked as one of the world’s most sustainable companies, partnering with Adaptive to further develop its engineered materials. In a similar vein, there are only a handful of companies in the world with the materials expertise, equipment manufacturing capabilities at scale and creative internal culture to enable a paradigm change in additive manufacturing. Applied Materials is at the top of that list.”