Swiss startup 9T Labs has closed a seed financing round of €3.9 million to finish the development of its industrial 3D printing solution and scale up the first mass manufacturing industrial use cases.
The startup was founded by Chester Houwink, Giovanni Cavolina and Martin Eichenhofer in 2018, and is on a mission to make carbon fiber composite materials as accessible as ordinary metal materials. 9T Labs’ proprietary technology provides a seamlessly integrated workflow to mass produce industry grade carbon fiber composite parts, combining advanced software algorithms, 3D printing technology, and post-processing in one solution. The technology eases the use of this performance material, driving down lead times and production cost to accelerate the growth of this established €72 billion industry.
The new funds come from existing investors like Wingman Ventures and new contributions from Investiere and the Technology Fund. 9T Labs is also supported by the ESA BIC programme.
Additionally, as part of the financing round, two experienced industry veterans join the board of directors, Andreas Wuellner and Bertrand Humel van der Lee, bringing together 40 years of experience in fiber composite processing and manufacturing.
“Knowing from experience what limits the widespread adoption of advanced fiber composite solutions, I found 9T Labs’ integral technology approach to overcome such limitations, fostering the adoption in mass manufacturing, very convincing”, says Andreas.
“In contrast to plastic and metal 3D printing companies, which compete with the existing and established automated CNC manufacturing solutions, 9T Labs enters a market which has not yet seen standardized automation and software solutions for mass manufacturing, providing a huge market potential”, explains Bertrand.
