Ein 36-jähriger Junge aus Quanzhou hat 3D-Drucker verkauft: Er hat mehrere Hundert Millionen Yuan finanziert und sogar einen Weltrekord gebrochen.

In the highly competitive 3D printing industry, another company has received significant financing.

On December 10th, the 3D printing brand Snapmaker announced that it had completed its Series B financing worth hundreds of millions of yuan.

This round was jointly led by Hillhouse Capital and Meituan, followed by Shunwei Capital, Meituan Longzhu, and Nanshan Strategic New Industry Investment. The old shareholders Tongchuang Weiye and Orient Securities Capital increased their investments.

As early as August this year, Snapmaker set a record. The U1 3D printer it developed raised 150 million yuan on the global crowdfunding platform, becoming the project with the highest crowdfunding amount in the history of 3D printing. Snapmaker reported that all crowdfunding orders for the U1 have already been delivered.

The founder of Snapmaker, Chen Xuedong, was born in 1989 in Quanzhou, Fujian. Since childhood, he has been interested in Lego and engineering. In high school, he won the World Championships of the Olympic Robotics Competition and was admitted to Xiamen University. During his studies, he developed and designed several robots. After graduation, he worked for two years at the Xi'an Research Institute of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China. In 2016, Chen Xuedong founded Snapmaker in Shenzhen.

In 2025, 75 investments were made in the 3D printing industry on the Chinese primary market, and a total of 59 companies received financing. Compared with 55 transactions and 51 companies in 2024, the industry has clearly heated up (Source: CVSource of Touzhong Jiachuan).

Among them, 15 companies completed two or more rounds of financing in 2025. Synergy High - Tech even completed three rounds of financing within a year.

Another leading company, Creality, has already submitted its stock exchange listing applications to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. If it successfully goes public, it could become the first publicly - listed consumer 3D printer provider.

- 01 -

Why has 3D printing suddenly become so popular? The core reason: Both the industrial and consumer markets are growing simultaneously.

Let's first look at the consumer market.

In the past, mainly makers and niche enthusiasts bought consumer 3D printers. Today, it's completely different. Families, schools, and entrepreneurs all buy 3D printers. Family households have even become the main customers. In the first half of 2025, the share of individual consumers in the Chinese consumer 3D printer market increased from less than 20% three years ago to 45%.

Individual consumers can be roughly divided into two categories. Some are parents who use 3D printers for parent - child interaction. They print building blocks, dinosaur skeletons, etc., to promote the practical skills of their children. The others are technology enthusiasts who use the 3D printer as a "home workshop" to make DIY projects and personalized gifts.

Schools and small businesses have also become important buyers. About 80% of Chinese primary and secondary schools plan to introduce 3D printing into the STEAM curriculum in the next two to three years. In cities like Yiwu and Shenzhen, even "3D printing farms" have emerged. Small businesses use these for small - batch production and supply markets and trendy toy fairs. Since no molds are needed, the production cost of a toy can be reduced to about 2 yuan.

The overseas market is even larger than the Chinese one. In the first quarter of 2025, the global shipments of entry - level 3D printers (price below $2,500) exceeded one million. 95% of them come from Chinese providers. The brands Creality, Tiertime, Anycubic, and Snapmaker have achieved the best results.

Overseas consumers also have "more practical" reasons. 42% of purchases are for "repairing things". Printing replacement parts for household appliances, furniture joints, and small car parts - all these are essential.

The expansion of the consumer 3D printer market is due to a group of Shenzhen entrepreneurs solving a long - standing problem in the industry: being affordable and easy to use.

In 2020, Tao Ye, the founder of Tiertime, entered the 3D printing industry. He previously worked on products at DJI and was very familiar with the supply chain and production costs. This time, he applied the same strategy to 3D printers: The most important components are self - produced, and cost - cutting is decisively carried out wherever possible.

The result was immediate - the printing became finer, but the price was lower.

Here, the concept of "accuracy" is briefly explained: The higher the accuracy, the closer the printed object matches the original design and the clearer the details are.

In 2020, most consumer 3D printers could only print with a minimum thickness of 0.05 millimeters. By 2023, Tiertime launched the entry - level model A1, which reduced this figure to 0.01 millimeters. The price was only $199, which is about half the price of comparable products.

It should be noted that before the introduction of the A1, only the high - end models of leading brands like Tiertime and Snapmaker could achieve an accuracy of 0.02 millimeters.

How fine is 0.01 millimeters? You can directly print the 0.2 - millimeter - thick hairs of an anime model or the 0.3 - millimeter - wide grooves of a mechanical gear. The lines are clear and burr - free, and the printed object can be used directly without further sanding.

Even more important is the success rate. Tiertime has increased the printing quality to 96%, which means that normal users can print successfully in more than nine out of ten cases when following the instructions. This has turned 3D printing from a "geek toy" into a tool that ordinary people can also use.

A recognized problem in 3D printing is the high price for multi - color or multi - material printing.

If a printer is to use different colors or materials simultaneously, either the structure becomes more complicated or there is significant material waste, which increases the cost. This has been an obstacle to the spread of 3D printing.

The turning point came in the last two years.

In 2024, Tiertime also increased the accuracy of multi - material printing to 0.01 millimeters, which is twice the industry average. In 2025, Snapmaker lowered the threshold even further. Its high - end consumer model, the U1, has four independent print heads and an automatic tool - changing system. Multi - color printing is faster and more accurate, and material waste is reduced by 80%.

Even more important is the price. The early - bird price for the U1 on the crowdfunding platform was $749. Considering government subsidies, the initial price dropped to 4,504 yuan.

This is roughly equivalent to the price of a mid - range smartphone.

Multi - color 3D printing is no longer the privilege of "professional players" for the first time.

In the past, the first hurdle in 3D printing was not the machine but the modeling. Many people got stuck at this point and couldn't even start.

Today, the situation is different. With the help of AI, users can simply describe a text, and a printable model will be directly generated.

Even if you can't draw or have no software knowledge, you can use 3D printing.

This spread has led to a new ecosystem of creators. Some directly sell the printed items, like the "3D printing farms" emerging in different parts of the country. Others may not print themselves but focus on design, modeling, and planning.

The leading manufacturers are also promoting this direction. Creality released the app "Creality Cloud" in 2020, targeting the 3D printing model community. By 2025, this platform had over 4 million registered users worldwide.

Even if you don't have a Creality printer, you can find models, learn techniques, and accept orders in the community. 3D printing is beginning to transform from a machine into a network around creativity and manufacturing.

- 02 -

Now let's look at the industrial market.

The most commonly used areas are aerospace, medical implants, automotive parts, and the customized production of consumer goods, and mass production has already been established.

Data from trade shows confirm this trend. At the TCT Asia 2025 (Asian 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing Exhibition), the proportion of industrial visitors with a purchase budget of over 5 million yuan was 13.24%. In 2024, this proportion was only 8.5%.

The breakthrough in industrial 3D printing does not lie in a particular device suddenly becoming very popular, but in its actual applicability in more and more real - world applications.

In 2019, an American research team used 3D printing to produce a spinal support grid that enabled a rat to regain its mobility. In the same year, an Israeli team printed the first complete heart with cells and blood vessels.

These two events made investors seriously consider for the first time that 3D printing might change medicine itself.

In 2020, China also took 3D printing into space. An experiment on 3D printing of continuously fiber - reinforced composites was carried out in a weightless environment. This means that 3D printing is no longer limited to Earth's conditions and has a broader application field.

In 2022, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China clearly stated that 3D printing technology has achieved large - scale and engineering applications in aircraft manufacturing. This marks a key change - 3D printing is starting to move from a "small - batch proofing tool" to real industrial production.

Players in the industrial field compete not only for individual parameters but for the maturity of technology, cost - efficiency, and adaptation to specific applications. Only when all these conditions are met can 3D printing enter real production lines.

Take Synergy High - Tech as an example. This company focuses on 3D printing of continuous fibers and ceramics. It has broken the long - term monopoly of foreign manufacturers in terms of materials and equipment.

Even more important is that it doesn't just aim at selling equipment. Synergy High - Tech has established close partnerships with customers in the aerospace, military, and medical industries and is directly involved in practical projects. For example, in the aerospace industry, complex and lightweight components such as special brackets and combustion chambers are individually printed for customers - these are difficult to produce with traditional methods, but 3D printing is particularly suitable here.

Now let's look at SIRUI Additive Manufacturing, which has taken a different path. It didn't start with equipment but focused on a long - neglected problem: metal waste.

SIRUI Additive Manufacturing has processed metal waste from aerospace and medicine back into usable metal powder using the "cold forming technology for metal powder". Currently, it is the only company in the industry that has achieved mass production of affordable recycled titanium powder.

On this basis, it has also extended the technology to other metals such as aluminum, tantalum, niobium, and silver, thus developing a comprehensive ability to produce metal powder from the entire metal spectrum.

This technology not only meets the demand of high - end manufacturing for high - quality metal materials but also significantly reduces the cost of metal waste disposal.

- 03 -

3D printing has quickly become popular, but there is a problem that is constantly mentioned: There is a shortage of qualified personnel.

This can be seen from job postings. After Creality submitted its stock exchange listing applications, it hired many employees to expand production and research.

But some key technical positions remained unfilled for months. For example, the positions for algorithm engineers in the slicing engine and leading electric motor drive engineers could not be filled for four consecutive months.

To attract qualified personnel, the company offered about 30% more than the industry average for slicing algorithm engineers, but it was still difficult to find employees.

If it's so difficult for leading companies to find qualified personnel, you can imagine what the situation is like in the entire industry. It's possible to raise capital and secure orders, but it's the lack of qualified labor that hinders development.

The problem is not that there are too few people, but that it's difficult to find the right people. The successful use of 3D printing requires a combination of technology and application scenarios.

In the medical field, one must not only have knowledge of printing technology but also understand the clinical requirements for dental prostheses and orthopedic implants. In the aerospace field, one must not only be familiar with metal printing.