Doubling Down on Metal 3D printing with DesktopMetal’s Team

Bilal Zuberi

April 26, 2016

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Doubling Down on Metal 3D printing with DesktopMetal’s Team

Less than 6 months ago I blogged about our investment in DesktopMetal’s Series A. It is an incredible deep-tech company founded in Boston by my friends Ric Fulop, Jonah Myerberg, Yet-Ming Chiang, Chris Schuh, Matt Verminski et al. Company aims to bring metal 3D printing to your desktop — prototyping and small scale manufacturing will never be the same again.

I am proud to say that Lux Capital has doubled down on that investment with DesktopMetal’s Series B, and I have joined their Board of Directors. Our co-investors in the company include NEA, KPCB, Stratasys, Founder Collective, Data Collective, Bolt and others.

Lux Capital has had a long standing thesis in the 3D space: from 3D imaging at Matterport, Lumenous3D, and Pinscreen to 3D printing at Shapeways and Sols. And probably 80% of our portfolio companies use 3D printers of various kinds in their development labs. DesktopMetal is a natural fit.

It is not often that such an amazing team of entrepreneurs, engineers and technical experts in a field come together to work on an ambitious idea. Kudos to Ric Fulop for assembling probably one of the smartest teams in the Boston tech sector. I encourage you to see the talent he has recruited…and you will see reasons why I continue to invest in breakthrough technology startups out of Boston. When I visited DesktopMetal a few weeks ago I saw their latest systems in operation…and they were rockin’ — printing various metals under room atmosphere conditions at fast speeds. I was sold on the spot that we needed to support them in acceleration of their ideas. This team moves fast, builds quickly, and iterates.

The company will have lots more to reveal in coming months regarding their product pipeline and roadmap. In the meantime, we are excited to be a part of their journey and to be contributing to their mission of bringing advanced metal manufacturing technology to every engineering workshop, laboratory, startup, corporation, and factory.

More financing details here.

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Bilal Zuberi

General Partner

For nearly two decades, Bilal has been investing in founders that want to solve big, important problems with technically ambitious solutions, across industries (enterprise software, deeptech, healthcare, national security, climate) and stages (from seed to growth). He wants to partner with good human beings who are driven to build responsible, ethical companies, and believes technology can not only help address some of the world’s largest problems, but also make humans lives significantly better. Bilal brings 20 years of experience to Board roles.

Bilal led Lux’s investments in Applied Intuition, Ironclad, OpenSpace, Nozomi Networks, Commure, Tendo Health, DesktopMetal ($DM), Evolv ($EVLV), Aurora Solar, Kyra Health, Saildrone, Cloaked, Happiest Baby, Zededa, Fiddler, Copia Automation, Kinetic, Nominal, and others.

You don’t choose your passions, your passions choose you. –Jeff Bezos

Prior to joining Lux, Bilal was a VC at General Catalyst. Before that he was a technical founder/entrepreneur. Earlier in his career, Bilal was a strategy consultant at BCG. Bilal earned a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (under Prof. Mario Molina, Nobel laureate, 1995). He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Lemelson Foundation. He is an immigrant citizen in this country, and thankful every day for opportunities that he has been afforded here.

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