Divergent Technologies closes series C funding with $160 million
Divergent Technologies, Torrance, California, USA, reports that it has completed Series C funding totalling $160 million. The funding will enable the company to industrialise its fully-integrated platform, combining generative design, Additive Manufacturing, and automated assembly, expand operations, and meet the growing demand among automotive OEMs for design and production of vehicle structures leveraging Divergent’s proprietary digital production technology.
Along with the new funding, Divergent states that it is welcoming John L Thornton, former president of Goldman Sachs, executive chairman of Barrick Gold, and board member of Ford Motor Company, to its board of directors.
Divergent Technologies aims to make the vehicle manufacturing process more efficient and less wasteful using Additive Manufacturing. Through the company’s Divergent Adaptive Production System (DAPS®), it replaces the conventional structure design and production process, which is reliant on legacy software, vehicle architectures, tooling and related factory assets with a proprietary, patented, end-to-end system for vehicle design and engineering, volume manufacturing and assembly.
The DAPS software-hardware stack was developed in house, with over 500 patent filings across the system. This approach enables both low- and high-volume manufacturing without costly tooling and capital expenses, enabling manufacturers to quickly iterate and invent new product models from anywhere in the world.
With lead inventor, founder and CEO Kevin Czinger, Divergent has a team of more than 180 engineers and scientists across four technology divisions: Structures, Software (HPC, GD and AI), Additive Manufacturing (Hardware, Software and Materials) and Automation (Software, Optics and Robotics).
“This funding represents a sterling affirmation of how disruptive we are in the auto manufacturing industry, one that really hasn’t experienced such revolution since Henry Ford developed the assembly line more than 100 years ago,” stated Kevin Czinger. “Of great importance, given the global focus on sustainability, DAPS is planet-saving manufacturing in that it radically reduces lifecycle environmental impact by optimising total vehicle ‘cradle-to-cradle’ efficiency.”
Lukas Czinger, senior vice president of Operations, commented, “DAPS creates radically more efficient structures using a fraction of the typical engineering time and transforms automotive companies from CapEx-constrained businesses to flexible, design-driven organisations. It is the first instance of digital industrial manufacturing. The factory infrastructure stays consistent regardless of the design, only the data changes, allowing DAPS to switch between differentiated designs seamlessly with no downtime in-between. DAPS entering serial production this year represents a historic inflection point in automotive manufacturing.”
John L Thornton, said, “Seeing Divergent in action is seeing the future of automotive manufacturing now. This system will become the norm in the industry. The transformation in manufacturing which Divergent will lead will be good for the US, good for jobs, good for efficiency, for productivity and for climate.”
The capabilities delivered by the system are highlighted in the industry-disrupting performance of the Czinger Vehicles 21C hypercar, the first production car designed and built using Divergent’s ground-breaking technology. Over the past few months, the hypercar broke the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) production car track lap record by six seconds and the Laguna Seca production car track lap record by two seconds. The 21C V8 was designed to use a range of fuels, including carbon recycled methanol and other e-fuels, so it can be run as a zero-emissions vehicle.
Divergent plans a scale-up of its advanced manufacturing facilities, with future deployments of DAPS factories planned for Europe and the USA starting in 2024. The company is currently in development with eight initial OEM brands on vehicle structure programmes with production volumes ranging from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of vehicles across the models’ production life, with the first program entering production this year. Divergent’s ultimate vision is to build a global network of DAPS factories driving distributed innovation across the planet in a circular economy manufacturing system.
Discover how Czinger Vehicles is using Divergent’s systems in our article: How the Czinger 21C is redefining next-generation car manufacturing
