Creating these precision metal parts is the job of the $45B tooling industry. It has traditionally been a time-consuming and expensive process, which can act as a bottleneck in manufacturers' product launch schedules. Across industries, OEMs are facing pressure to reduce costs, iterate quickly, and improve product quality. They were stuck with existing conventional manufacturing techniques until Mantle came along with a revolutionary technology called TrueShape.
Mantle
- Leadership
- Theodore Sorom, Dr. Stephen Connor
- Location
- San Francisco, CA
- Sector
- Materials
- Year Invested
- 2021
- Status
- Private
Most of the everyday products we use are created from molds and dies
After successfully developing a new printable electronics material for the solar industry, Steve Connor wondered if a similar material could be layered to make solid metal parts. He teamed up with Ted Sorom, a Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur who previously founded Rixty, to form Mantle. Ted spent his early career as a product design engineer and had personally experienced the lack of innovation in tooling technology. He saw the opportunity to use Mantle’s technology to create the tools and dies used to mass produce the products that surround us.
After years of development, Mantle’s TrueShape technology now prints, shapes, and sinters precision metal parts with dimensional tolerances and surface finish that rival CNC-machined parts with little to no post-processing. We led the Series B round alongside existing investors to accelerate Mantle’s manufacturing and sales. Today, the company has produced over a million end-use parts for customers with its metal 3D printers.