Last month Desktop Metal, which develops and sells 3D printers, filed for protection under chapter 11 of the US bankruptcy code on 28 July, which will not have come as a surprise to anyone who had been following the company.
However, Desktop Metal’s foreign subsidiaries did not file for bankruptcy, with the company and 15 of its affiliated companies filing a motion to sell these foreign subsidiaries and related US assets. Following a hearing, this was granted on 31 July.
A US court has since cleared the Private Equity firm Anzu Partners – technically, an affiliate of Anzu Partners created specifically – to acquire the binder jetting firm ExOne GmbH and its Japanese subsidiary ExOne KK. Eric Bader will continue as the managing director for ExOne GmbH, and Ken Yokoyama will continue as the managing director for ExOne KK. Whitney Haring-Smith, managing partner at Anzu Partners, commented, “We recognize the strength of ExOne’s customer and supplier relationships.” He added: “Our priority is to ensure stability, honour existing commitments, and continue building trusted partnerships as we move forward together.”
Anzu Partners is also said to be interested in acquiring two other subsidiaries of Desktop Metal, EnvisionTec GmbH and AIDRO s.r.l.
It’s a sad end for Desktop Metal, which had promised so much. The company, which was based in Massachusetts, USA, began in 2015 with blinder jetting 3D printers using technology developed at MIT with the promise to move additive manufacturing from a prototyping to a production technology. In 2020 the company went public, via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, giving it a listing on the New York stock exchange and access to more funding. That led to an aggressive acquisition spree that included: EnvisionTec, specializing in photopolymer 3D printing, mainly for dental applications; ExOne, using binder jetting 3D printing; Adaptive3D, for high-performance elastomers; Aerosint, for multi-material printing technology; AIDRO, offering AM for hydraulic components; as well as several dental labs to grown its health division.
Not surprisingly, Desktop Metal struggled to integrate all these companies and by 2022 the high inflation and supply chain disruption that followed on from the pandemic all started to take their toll. This led to a series of cost-cutting measures, culminating in a proposed merger with Stratasys, which itself was looking to fight off Nano Dimension’s unwanted advances. That deal collapsed when the Stratasys shareholders rejected it, but instead Nano Dimension stepped in to acquire Desktop Metal.
So this bankruptcy should be seen in the context of the continuing saga around Nano Dimension. I’ve detailed this in a number of stories over the last couple of years, which interested readers can find by searching for Nano Dimension. The most recent of these stories, back in May 2025, summarized these events and noted the new management team’s intention to reorganize and tidy up the chaos of those years.
Nano Dimension completed its acquisition of Desktop Metal on April 2, 2025 for $179.3m and then only after being ordered to do so by the Delaware court of chancery. By this time the new management team, led by CEO Ofir Baharav, had just been installed at Nano Dimension, which led to a refocusing of the group’s activities and left Desktop Metal surplus to requirements.
Consequently, the company immediately undertook a strategic review to explore its liabilities and liquidity needs. It’s reasonable to assume that Nano Dimension already had a good idea of those needs as part of the due diligence it would have carried out when acquiring the company. Nonetheless, Nano Dimension then declined to meet Desktop Metal’s immediate liabilities, forcing the company into bankruptcy.
Nano Dimension has been at pains to distance itself from this sell-off, announcing that the decision to file for bankruptcy protection was made by Desktop Metal’s independent Board of Directors, and blaming the situation on “decisions made by [Desktop Metal’s] prior management”.
Ofir Baharav, Nano Dimension’s CEO, explained, “We are safeguarding our financial strength and preserving our position as the best capitalized company in our ecosystem. This is what enables the Company’s to pursue strategic opportunities from a position of maximum strength – and that is exactly what the Company’s shareholders should expect from us.”
Readers can find more information on Nano Dimension from nano-di.com.
(First published in the Printing and Manufacturing Journal)
