A very long time ago, in 2023, the additive manufacturing (AM) industry was enraptured over the attempts by a large chunk of its publicly traded original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to acquire one another. Ultimately, none of those initially floated deals went through, although one of the players in the fracas, Nano Dimension, did eventually take over another of the players, Desktop Metal, and followed up on that deal the next year with the acquisition of Markforged, a company that hadn’t even been on the table in 2023.
Much of that strange time in the industry’s history was driven by Nano Dimension’s repeated efforts to execute a hostile takeover of Stratasys, which provides some particularly interesting context for the latest AM industry deal: Stratasys will purchase Markforged from Nano Dimension in an all-cash deal valued at $42.5 million. Stratasys gets everything other than Markforged’s metal binder jetting (MBJ) business, built via the company’s own 2022 acquisition of Sweden’s Digital Metal for $40 million in cash and stocks.
So, Nano Dimension is now an MBJ company. Sure, why not! The company already sold its original business line, which revolved around 3D printed electronics, in April, following Desktop Metal’s declaration of bankruptcy last year, resulting in parts of the latter company’s portfolio being acquired by Anzu Partners and the flagship Desktop Metal MBJ brand being rescued by ARC Impact. As far as I can tell, essentially nothing of what remains of Nano Dimension has anything to do with what the company’s business model was as recently as 3 years ago, and perhaps that’s for the best. Maybe it will try to copy the pivot that ARC is making with the Desktop Metal rump state.
In any case, Stratasys is the real protagonist here, and I think this acquisition makes far more sense than any of the possibilities that were up in the air in 2023, except for maybe the 3D Systems offer to merge with Stratasys. This deal, however, is much less of a risk and fits much the same profile, albeit on a smaller scale, as the upsides in the hypothetical 3D Systems merger: minimizing redundancy by maximizing synergy. For instance, Stratasys and Markforged both excel at tooling applications, especially in automotive, and they both also have ample experience with aircraft interior applications.
Aside from the difference in brand longevity — Stratasys is, of course, one of the industry’s pioneers, while Markforged emerged in the 2010s — the biggest differentiator between the two brands probably lies in Markforged’s metal extrusion capabilities, which I think the company has leveraged very nicely in recent years via a print engine adaptor for its FX 10 system. Earlier this year, Stratasys acquired Tritone Technologies, the OEM of a unique spin on MBJ, so Stratasys didn’t need the Digital Metal division.
All in all, Stratasys got the best bits from a company that did $70 million in revenue last year, and that Nano Dimension itself acquired for around $120 million in 2024, for just over $40 million, which seems like a great value no matter how you slice it.
In a press release about Stratasys’s acquisition of Markforged, Yoav Zeif, the CEO of Stratasys, said, “This acquisition further advances our capabilities to meet customers’ growing needs in critical areas such as defense and aerospace at a time when additive manufacturing continues to displace traditional manufacturing for high requirement applications in production. We believe that our teams can immediately reinvigorate revenue growth by adding MarkForged, Inc.’s products and software systems as we leverage our leading partner networks. We are confident this transaction will strengthen Stratasys’ position in many of the largest and most structurally critical industries where performance, supply chain resilience, reliability, and scalability are essential.”
Zeif is correct that defense is indeed one area where Markforged has a lot to offer Stratasys, now that they’ve joined forces. Stratasys is no stranger to the defense industry, but Markforged gives its new parent corporation immediate, additional capacity that aligns perfectly with what the latter is already doing.
Markforged X7 Field Edition. Image courtesy of Markforged
Specifically, both brands have existing relationships with the US Navy surrounding deployable 3D printers, including at least one Markforged X7 installed on a submarine. Stratasys could also certainly benefit from incorporating the Markforged Digital Forge inventory platform into its ecosystem, given the Navy’s ramp-up of its digital inventory capacity.
When you get down into the weeds of the company that will result from this acquisition, one of the most interesting possibilities is how Stratasys could benefit from leveraging the aforementioned metal kit for the FX10 to some of its own product lines. Perhaps no potential exists there, but if Stratasys can learn from its new subsidiary to apply the same principles to certain Stratasys machines, that’s a very cheap path towards effectively doubling the addressable market of every polymer machine that can be viably combined with a metal adaptor.
The main takeaway for me is that the best acquisitions tend to go to the companies that can afford to be patient. Stratasys could’ve done what Nano Dimension did in 2024 and, unwilling to just sit on its hands and wait, paid over $100 million for Markforged. Instead, Stratasys bided its time and less than a couple of years later, snapped up the very same company (less the Digital Metal division) for a bargain. With its Tritone acquisition, Stratasys now has two different metal 3D printing technologies, and Markforged has access to Stratasys’s global footprint. Given all the chaos of 2023, the outcome in 2026 is arguably the best-case scenario for one of the longest-standing companies in the AM industry.
Featured image courtesy of Stratasys