Formlabs
World's largest professional desktop SLA and SLS 3D printer manufacturer, founded in 2011.
Formlabs – Company PageFormlabs is a 3D printing technology company headquartered in Somerville, Massachusetts, founded in 2011 by MIT Media Lab alumni Maxim Lobovsky, Natan Linder, and David Cranor. It pioneered affordable professional desktop stereolithography (SLA) printing and is today the largest supplier of professional SLA and SLS 3D printers in the world, serving engineers, designers, manufacturers, healthcare providers, and researchers globally.
The company's product portfolio includes the Form Series (SLA) and Fuse Series (SLS) printers, post-processing hardware (Form Wash, Form Cure), proprietary software, and an extensive materials library spanning general-purpose, medical, dental, casting, and elastomeric resins. Its dedicated dental division, Formlabs Dental, is recognised as the leading professional 3D printer provider for dentistry and orthodontics worldwide.
Formlabs raised $2.95 million on Kickstarter in 2012 for its debut Form 1 printer, one of the most highly funded crowdfunding campaigns of its time. Subsequent funding rounds—including a $150 million Series E from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 in 2021—brought the company's valuation to $2 billion. With 500–1,000 employees and offices in the US, Germany, Japan, China, Singapore, and Hungary, Formlabs operates at significant global scale.
For any innovation touching professional 3D printing, advanced manufacturing, digital fabrication, or additive manufacturing materials, Formlabs is a highly relevant stakeholder given its market leadership, broad industry verticals, and established global distribution network.
Ideas that could help Formlabs
- Bio-Optimized 3D-Printed Aligner Resin
A high-performance 3D-printing resin for direct-printed aligners designed to minimize water-induced mechanical degradation and chemical leaching. The formulation focuses on high-conversion monomers to ensure structural stability and biocompatibility in the oral environment.
Why it helps: Could expand their dental resin portfolio with a material specifically optimized for the physiological conditions of the mouth.
- Full-Arch TAD Guide Generator with Evidence-Based Safety Margins
A digital workflow tool for orthodontic labs that automatically generates full-arch 3D-printed surgical guides for palatal TAD insertion, embedding clinically validated safety distances to compensate for known translational and rotational deviations.
Why it helps: Formlabs supplies dental resin printers and materials to thousands of orthodontic practices; an integrated guide-generation software would drive consumable (resin cartridge) sales and deepen platform lock-in.