Seurat raises $99M to deploy new machines and scale Additive Manufacturing capacity
Seurat Technologies, Wilmington, Massachusetts, USA, has announced a $99 million Series C round led by NVentures, NVIDIA’s venture capital arm and Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund focused on climate solutions. Seurat’s latest funding round includes participation from new investors Honda Motor and Cubit Capital, among others, as well as participation from previous investors True Ventures, SIP Global Partners, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Denso Global, General Motors Ventures, Maniv Mobility LP, and Xerox Ventures.
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), manufacturing is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 31% of the country’s emissions. Powered by 100% green energy, Seurat’s stated mission is to ‘reinvent and reshore manufacturing’ with what it calls Area Printing technology, a form of Laser Beam Powder Bed Fusion (PBF-LB) Additive Manufacturing.
Developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Seurat believes that its high-precision, high-volume Additive Manufacturing technology has the potential to decarbonised manufacturing and the company anticipates that its technology has the potential to mitigate as much as 100 million tons of CO2 by 2030.
“Our mission is to create a green manufacturing industry,” said James DeMuth, co-founder and CEO of Seurat. “With our Additive Manufacturing technology, our print factories will provide our customers with clean manufacturing that can compete with the volumes, quality, and price points of traditional manufacturing. This new funding will enable Seurat to unlock our next phase of growth, deploy our new machines and scale our factory capacity to meet current demands.”
Ion Yadigaroglu, Partner at Capricorn, added, “Seurat’s potential to disrupt and decarbonise the traditional metal parts manufacturing industry is tremendous. We have been impressed from the early days of the company by James and his team’s technical expertise and acumen to build a highly scalable business, with applicability across numerous industries. We are excited to participate in this round of funding, which will enable the company to ramp up production capabilities at greater scale and ultimately grow its client base.”
Seurat plans to deploy its AM factories at or near customer sites around the world, enabling parts to be produced in closer proximity to where they are needed whilst reshoring supply chains and reducing emissions from transportation and global logistics.
“Accelerated computing is unlocking new capabilities within the manufacturing industry, while creating a path toward sustainability,” said Mohamed ‘Sid’ Siddeek, corporate vice president and head of NVentures. “Seurat’s green approach to manufacturing will help transform industry standards.”
Manabu Ozawa, Managing Executive Officer of Honda Motor Co., Ltd., stated, “Seurat has an innovative concept and technologies for metal Additive Manufacturing, and Honda has high expectations for their future potential. The metal Additive Manufacturing technology will enable the enhancement of the value of products through innovative design, and as Honda strives to create the joy and freedom of mobility, we envision that this technology will be necessary for us. Honda will continue to search for, collaborate with and invest in companies with a promising future through our global open innovation programme Honda Xcelerator Ventures.”
Seurat’s Boston-area pilot factory will have the capacity to produce more than 25 tons of metal parts annually and is already oversubscribed. Seurat also has commitments to develop 59 tons of additively manufactured metal components for Siemens Energy turbines over a six-year period for parts meeting the material qualification requirements. In all, Seurat has LOIs from six customers totalling 4,000 tons of material and over $750 million in projected revenue over the next several years.
Want to learn more about Seurat’s novel Area Printing? Check out Metal AM’s deep-dive into the technology in the Spring 2022 issue, available here.
