Fabric8Labs sees $50M in funding for electrochemical AM process
February 8, 2023
Fabric8Labs, San Diego, USA, has closed its $50 million Series B investment round, led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from existing investors, including Intel Capital, imec.XPAND, SE Ventures, TDK Ventures, and Lam Capital. This infusion of capital is expected to allow the company to scale the company’s proprietary Electrochemical Additive Manufacturing (ECAM) technology and establish a pilot production facility.
ECAM is a room-temperature AM technology that produces complex, dense metal parts without thermal processing. The technology builds at the atomic level from a water-based feedstock containing dissolved metal ions. The electrochemical approach allows for micron-scale feature resolution, complex internal features, high-purity materials, and rapid scalability to support mass manufacturing.
“We are thrilled to have NEA’s support in executing our vision,” stated Jeff Herman, CEO and co-founder, Fabric8Labs. “It is critical to have partners that are aligned with our mission to fundamentally shift manufacturing with a sustainable, Additive Manufacturing approach, and we have been fortunate to surround ourselves with a team of top tier investors.”
ECAM is said to be uniquely suited to produce ultra-high resolution, pure copper components, which can be directly additively manufactured onto temperature-sensitive substrates such as PCBs, silicon, or existing metal components. ECAM enables the manufacturing of designs to meet the stringent performance requirements in end-applications such as high-performance computing (HPC), data centres, electric vehicles, wearables, RF communications, and a range of consumer electronics products.
“The potential of Fabric8Labs’ novel technology is undeniable and we believe ECAM is suited to support a wide range of applications across the electronics value chain,” added Jennifer Ard, Managing Director at Intel Capital. “As the team works to scale their offerings, they’ll be able to deliver value across multiple business units for their customers, furthering their value-add.”
Fabric8Labs is also developing medical device applications and micro-mechanical components, applications which leverage ECAM’s ability to produce extremely fine, complex features and high-performance alloys. As the company scales, ECAM is expected to enable applications that require ultra-high resolution, such as advanced surgical tools, sensors, diagnostic equipment, and MEMs.
“ECAM stands out as truly differentiated among the sea of approaches to Additive Manufacturing,” offered Greg Papadopoulos, PhD, Venture Partner at NEA. “You can avoid expensive post-processing, easily build complex things at micron-scale, print directly on your existing substrates, and do all of this at scale with, by far, the lowest energy – and thus carbon – footprint. We’re thrilled to partner with Jeff and the Fabric8Labs team on this revolution for additive manufacturing.”
Download Metal AM magazine
