Buzz and Money for Advanced Manufacturing

Welcome to the latest issue of the Industrial Innovation Advocate. We're talking about raising money, winning funding, generating mainstream media attention, and telling mega stories about infrastructure in the U.S. It sounds like a good week for industrial innovation.

Additive Manufacturing Catches the Eye of The Wall Street Journal

Back in 2020, the possibilities of additive manufacturing seemed everywhere in mainstream and business media, driven by creative applications of AM to address pandemic shortages and then by the SPAC boom that followed. Then reality set in and when those journalists realized manufacturing wasn't going to change overnight and startup unicorns weren't going to remain so, a lot of that attention faded.

That makes this week's feature in The Wall Street Journal notable. The newspaper's story, 3D Printers Are Having a Moment Thanks to the U.S., delves into how industrial 3D printing is addressing tangible production needs particularly for the U.S. military. And some of the companies it spotlights aren't the ones that have necessarily been the most visible.

For example, AML3D (ASX:AL3) is a large-format wire additive manufacturing company based in Australia that had been focused on marine applications in Singapore.

The company literally went on a tenfold increase in revenue within the space of about 12 months," AML3D Chief Executive Sean Ebert said.

Another Australia company, SPEE3D , focuses on cold spray AM and has been able to build a containerized system that can be deployed in the field. The company recently landed the former head of government sales from Stratasys.

Let's say 12 to 18 months to get ourselves established. I envisage we will move up to about 10 times that size within about a two-year period," (Spee3D) Chief Executive Byron Kennedy said.

Instead of general manufacturing transformation, this is about tangible applications in a specific sector that are mission-critical for customers. Hopefully the visibility continues and helps everyone. Now, someone needs to send the WSJ an image that didn't come from CES.

NIST Announces Funding for AI-Driven Manufacturing Institute

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced a competition to establish a new Manufacturing USA institute to focus on applying AI to boost U.S. manufacturing resilience. Up to $70 million is available over five years.

Ten years ago, Congress passed the Revitalize American Manufacturing and Innovation Act (RAMI Act), which authorized the Department of Commerce to hold “open-topic” competitions for manufacturing innovation institutes where those topics of highest importance to industry could be proposed, and which led to the creation of Manufacturing USA. Existing institutes include America Makes, which is focused on additive manufacturing, the ARM Institute focused on advanced robotics, and CESMII , focused on smart manufacturing technologies.

A recent study by LucidWorks LLC and reported on by 3Dprint.com found that while 93% of surveyed manufacturing professionals reported plans to increase spending on AI last year, that dropped to 58% this year despite the fact that manufacturers were above average in saying they were receiving positive ROI from AI initiatives, reflecting concerns particularly about response accuracy. The new institute represents an opportunity to focus U.S. manufacturing's AI efforts on the most promising applications and direct resources to scaling those efforts up, much as America Makes has been doing in AM.

The deadline for submitting concept papers is Sept. 30.

Funding Roundup: Mantle 3D, NanoGraf Corporation, Infinitum

Some big dollars have been flowing into U.S. advanced manufacturers lately. Here's three:

Chicago-based NanoGraf Corporation raised $65 million in a round led by CC Industries and Volta Energy, bringing the total raised to about $100 million. NanoGraf is an advanced materials company developing silicon-graphene materials for the next generation of lithium-ion batteries. And where is its first production-scale order going to? A U.S. defense contractor. (There is a trend here.)

Austin, Texas-based Infinitum secured $35 million in a Series E extension, bringing its total raised to $220 million. Investors included Marunouchi Innovation Partners and Rice Investment Group . The company's air core motor technology replaces traditional heavy copper cores. The PCB stator design also allows for better heat dissipation and more compact motor construction

San Francisco-based Mantle raised $20 million in Series C funding in a round led by Schooner Capital . Mantle's focus is the $45 billion market for injection mold tooling. Rather than focusing on 3D printing production parts, Mantle is focusing on 3D printing the molds that make those parts. The company's hybrid approach combines the best of CNC machining with a metal paste extrusion process. Watch the video to learn more about how it works.

Award-Winning Content Marketing from ABB

I'm always on the look-out for good marketing and communications work in the B2B space and want to give a shout-out to the communications team at ABB this week for winning Ragan Communications and PR Daily 's B2B Content Marketing Campaign of the Year, Best Microsite, and iInnovative IUse of Content. The team was also a finalist for strategy of the year. Let's take a look at the US Infrastructure microsite.

A few things I like:

• It has a storytelling hook: America is embarking on a once-in-a-generation investment in infrastructure. It's timely and draws you in.
• It is content- and channel-agnostic: Whatever it takes to tell the whole infrastructure story, rather than isolate them by videos, press coverage, white papers, etc. There is a narrative, a video, a digital brochure, a trade press story, a white paper, a press release, a webinar, and even an "interactive landscape." I see the topics - like wastewater treatment in Baltimore or engineering exceptional experiences into airports - rather than icons for "case studies" and "resources."
• It addresses multiple stakeholders, including customer and recruiting prospects, at different levels of the journey. That means both gated and ungated content.

To be sure, I don't have data on how well this microsite is working, and individual campaigns need to drive more targeted audiences to simple landing pages with a single clear CTA. But I like the leadership and engagement that this conveys, and it's important for a European company to demonstrate the depth of its commitment to the U.S. market when it comes to infrastructure-related categories.

Going to IMTS - International Manufacturing Technology Show ? Let's get together! Reach out to me at aaron at pearsonconsulting.co.