nTopology Snags $40M to Boost its Generative Design Platform

Software company nTopology has announced a hefty Series C funding round set to accelerate its offerings of engineering design tools for advanced manufacturing.

The $40 million round is led by Insight Partners and joined by Grant Verstandig and existing venture partners Root, Canaan, DCVC, and Haystack. Insight Partners’ Josh Fredberg is joining the nTopology Board of Directors, which also boasts former Autodesk CEO Carl Bass.

$40 million is a nice investment round at any point, but raising multi millions during a pandemic is its own feat — and one that advanced manufacturing companies seem to be seeing a lot of recently. Digital manufacturing technologies like 3D printing have proven resilient during this crisis, and the software to continue to drive their advances and adoption naturally has its place in investor interest.

nTopology specifically has been on the rise for some time, launching its nTop Platform and expanding operations into Europe last year alone.

The company’s software is today put to use “at hundreds of engineering companies by thousands of engineers on their most advanced projects in the aerospace, automotive, medical, and consumer industries.”

As the novel coronavirus pandemic has swept the globe, advanced manufacturing has risen to the many challenges that have impacted logistics. Directly pandemic-response supplies and equipment have been 3D printed, while decentralized production has helped fill holes in traditional supply chains. None of that, though, would be possible without the right software to design these many parts and products.

Software can present something of a bottleneck in operations; nTopology notes that they have seen that too often “engineers are forced to fight with their software and compromise on designs.” This is where the company sees its tools fitting, as the nTop Platform was created to eliminate this bottleneck.

They explain that nTop Platform is built on three major pillars geared toward individualized needs and adaptable to a variety of real-world use cases:

• Fast, Unbreakable Geometry
• Field-Driven Design
• Reusable Workflows

Looking ahead, nTopology sees a bright future for its platform. They note adoption-leading deployments in the aerospace and medical industries, which have also been leading the way generally in many advanced manufacturing sectors. Additive manufacturing is a major player in these industries.

Of note for aerospace and medical especially is that these are very heavily regulated industries — once technologies have been proven out in these fields, trickle-down expansion is more immediately possible for less-regulation-heavy applications. Automotive, consumer, and manufacturing tooling are also rapidly adopting nTopology’s — and additive manufacturing — tools, underscoring the general shape of adoption in these advanced technology areas.

Again aligning with much of the messaging we see in additive manufacturing, nTopology also sees the best place for their offering being alongside traditional workflows, rather than in place of; explaining this and a small look ahead of what we can expect from this Series C round, today’s announcement says:

Do we want to end up replacing traditional CAD? No, that’s not our purpose. Rather, we expect engineers to use nTop Platform alongside existing systems, to solve new and hard problems that traditional CAD was never built for. Overcoming those challenges will enable engineers to innovate faster, create new solutions to pressing global issues, and foster new markets. The types of problems that nTop Platform solves are more & more becoming a daily occurrence for all engineers. Closing this new round of funding will help make the most advanced engineering software accessible to all.”

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