BURLINGTON: In the winter of 2020, Desktop Metal, a high-flying startup just outside Boston, unveiled an industrial 3D printer so powerful that it sounded like magic. The printer could make metal parts for jet engines, trucks and medical implants “at speeds so unheard-of,” one commercial declared, “that some people thought it wasn’t possible.”
There was just one problem: That printer, the P-50, never worked well enough to sell.
It was quietly shelved after going out to only a few customers, an early warning of how much the 3D printing industry’s rapid growth relied on promises that have not come to fruition.
For decades, people in the 3D printing world heralded a new industrial revolution that would replace old machines on factory floors with sleek new printers that could cheaply and efficiently transform the way that nearly everything was made.
While 3D printers have become indispensable for certain products – customised dental implants and satellite components, for instance – adoption of the technology has lagged expectations. High interest rates, costly raw materials used by the machines and the sheer complexity of the printers have made many companies shy away from buying them.
The global market for additive manufacturing, a term for industrial 3D printing, was US$24.2bil (RM95.4bil) in 2025, according to Wohlers Associates, an industry advisory firm. That was nowhere near the US$47.7bil (RM188bil) the industry was expected to be when Desktop debuted the P-50.
Today, the industry focuses less on moonshot products and more on making sure customers are getting good use out of the machines they already have.
“The companies that remain are generally more focused on operational execution than on visionary projections,” said Alison Wyrick Mendoza, a consultant with Wohlers Associates, which is now a part of the standards organization ASTM International.
The struggling industry got a pep talk Wednesday from Yoav Zeif, CEO of Stratasys, which pioneered the sale of 3D printers in the 1990s.
“It takes years to adopt new technologies,” he said at the keynote address of the industry’s main conference, in New York. “What we are experiencing is a normal course of an industry that is maturing. There is maybe one big difference: We had a lot of hype.”
Unlike traditional manufacturing, which carves shapes out of raw materials, additive manufacturing prints products layer by layer using plastic, metal, ceramic or other materials. While the process can create complex geometries impossible to achieve with older machines, the technology tends to be slower, more expensive and prone to mechanical glitches that have hindered its leap into mass production.
Wall Street’s new favourites are companies like VulcanForms and Hadrian, the latter of which just started an additive manufacturing arm. Both sell 3D printed precision parts for aerospace and defence, and their printers incorporate artificial intelligence to guard against glitches and to allow one operator to oversee many machines.
Globally, much of the momentum in the industry today comes from China, where Bambu Lab, a company that sells affordable desktop 3D printers, is taking market share from established American firms.
When Desktop Metal was founded in 2015, the industry was growing at an annual rate of more than 25% – more than twice the rate it grew in 2025. China had not yet broken into the market, and the idea of a machine that could churn out metal parts in an office setting was still revolutionary.
Ric Fulop, a media-savvy entrepreneur and investor, pulled together a dream team of professors affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They included Emanuel Sachs, known as Ely, who invented a technology called binder jet in the 1980s that made it possible to replicate metal parts faster than the more common laser-based metal printers.
Much of the company’s value stemmed from Fulop’s ability to communicate the big dream of 3D printing’s potential. The company was valued at US$1bil (RM3.9bil) before it ever shipped a product. Then the pandemic gave a new sense of urgency to making parts on American soil, creating a frenzy on Wall Street.
Desktop went public in 2020 via a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, a risky investment vehicle. An investor presentation predicted that Desktop would earn nearly US$1bil (RM3.9bil) in revenue in 2025, much of it from selling the P-50.
The company’s competitors, Markforged and Velo3D, also went public with SPACs. All three companies were valued at well over US$1bil (RM3.9bil) in 2021, only to run into financial trouble.
Desktop used investors’ capital to snap up 11 other companies, but it collapsed last year when it was forced to file for bankruptcy. Its core business sold for US$7mil (RM27.6mil), a brutal reckoning not just for the company, but for the sector as a whole.
“Desktop’s bankruptcy ended a time of easy money, limitless promise and limitless promises,” said Joris Peels, an industry consultant who chaired this week’s conference, which included a session on Desktop’s future.
Some blame the costly and distracting expansion for Desktop’s demise, along with the aborted P-50, which cost the company nearly US$100mil (RM394mil) in research and development. But Fulop said the whole industry had become unprofitable in an era of high interest rates and unfair competition from China.
“The biggest issue is that we thought the market would grow at a certain rate,” Fulop said.
Fulop insists that his vision for 3D printing will eventually come true. But he’s already on to his next venture: General Flash, a startup that he says is developing a new way to refine metal. It’s so new that there isn’t a sign on the door yet. But it has already raised US$25mil (RM98mil), he said. – ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
