By Akash Sriram
(Reuters) – 3D metal-printing startup Seurat Technologies on Monday hinted at potentially going public in the medium-term and said it had raised $99 million in a funding round co-led by chip designer Nvidia’s venture capital arm.
With the latest series C funding round, the company’s valuation will approach $350 million, said a source who asked not to be named.
“I expect that (going public) is in our cards … 12-18 months is the earliest we would consider that … potentially more like 24 or 36,” Seurat CEO James DeMuth told Reuters in an interview, adding that proceeds from the financing round will be used to deploy its production printers.
The fundraise, co-led by Nvidia’s NVentures and Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund, brought in new investors Honda Motor and Cubit Capital. Existing backers including Porsche and venture capital units of Xerox Holdings and General Motors Co also participated.
Seurat is looking to bring parts manufacturing, with its green energy-powered Area Printing technology, closer to customer factories around the world in a bid to reshore supply chains and slash emissions.
Over the past couple of years, companies across industries globally have been looking to diversify supply chains to reduce their dependence on China to address business continuity concerns and as U.S.-Sino trade tensions heat up.
“Seurat’s local factory deployment model provides the industry with a solution to near-shore manufacturing and to increase the resiliency of supply chains,” said existing investor Porsche Automobil Holding’s board member Lutz Meschke.
Seurat also has commitments to supply 59 tons of metal components for Siemens Energy’s turbines over a six-year period and the startup said earlier this month that it had received letters of intent from global manufacturers exceeding capacity of its pilot factory in Massachusetts.
The company said it had letters of intent from six customers totaling 4,000 tons of material, setting it up for $750 million in revenue over several years.
(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
