BigRep leaves the stock market to survive
Just two years after going public, BigRep exits the stock market and sells its assets to subsidiaries
Atomic Layer of the Week:
On July 31, 2024, BigRep rang the opening bell at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Standing on the trading floor was NERA, the company’s fully 3D-printed motorcycle, alongside its latest industrial printer.
Management spoke about building a European 3D printing champion through acquisitions. It was, in every sense, a celebration of the company’s bright future.
Less than two years later, on June 29, 2026, the same company announced its voluntary liquidation.
What makes the story even more interesting is that as recently as spring 2026, BigRep was still unveiling new pellet extrusion technology and a machine featuring a build chamber exceeding one cubic meter.
Now is heading into liquidation.
How is it even possible?
What was actually announced
The announcement published on June 29 is surprisingly specific:
BigRep SE’s Management Board and Supervisory Board agreed to sell all shares in its operating subsidiary, BigRep GmbH. The buyers are De Krassny GmbH, Koehler Invest GmbH, and HAGE Holding GmbH.
The plan also includes signing the share purchase agreement, convening an Extraordinary General Meeting, initiating the company’s voluntary liquidation following shareholder approval, appointing a liquidator, and delisting the shares from the Frankfurt regulated market.
The transaction will be completed at fair market value based on an independent valuation.
Neither the purchase price nor the transaction timetable has been disclosed.
Any remaining proceeds after the company’s assets are liquidated will be distributed to shareholders if anything remains.
That final reservation says more than the rest of the announcement combined…
Founded in Berlin in 2014, BigRep spent a decade doing one thing exceptionally well: building large-format FFF 3D printers capable of producing meter-scale parts.
In November 2023, the company “acquired” Austrian manufacturer HAGE3D, known for its high-temperature systems.
In reality, it was more of an equal transaction rather than one company buying the other, but that was irrelevant at the time…
Few weeks later, it went public.
And here’s where problems started…
BigRep entered the stock market through the back door via a merger with SPAC company SMG Technology Acceleration SE, which had been listed in Frankfurt since autumn 2023.
The strategy sounded ambitious: consolidate the fragmented additive manufacturing market and create a European AM champion.
But instead of building a champion, BigRep delivered annual losses followed by several unsuccessful refinancing attempts.
Just take a look…
The snake eats its own tail
The most fascinating part is the list of buyers.
HAGE now returns as both co-owner and creditor, buying back the company that once absorbed it.
De Krassny and Koehler, former shareholders and would-be rescuers whose refinancing efforts ultimately failed, are acquiring the operating business from what remains.
All three have been part of the story from the beginning.
Now they are simply taking the business that still works and leaving the publicly listed shell to the liquidator.
Which raises an obvious question:
If the printers are good and the buyers knew the company inside out, why was the stock market journey necessary in the first place?
The uncomfortable answer is that the journey to the stock market is precisely what pushed the company into this position.
Large-format 3D printing is a solid niche business. Companies can thrive in that business for decades.
On one condition: they do not promise investors tenfold growth.
A publicly listed growth company is expected to keep expanding. It has to acquire competitors, consolidate markets, meet quarterly expectations, and finance a buy-and-build strategy with capital that a healthy niche business simply does not generate.
BigRep GmbH built large-format industrial printers.
BigRep SE sold the story of a future European champion.
The first survives - the second is being liquidated.
And that is the real conclusion - far less dramatic than the word “liquidation” suggests.
Because throughout this entire process, the technology remains intact.
Only the costume disappears: the listed holding company and the narrative built around it.
The new owners - who have been involved with the business from the very beginning - will most likely do what should have happened two years ago.
They will remove the burden of stock-market expectations from the machines, streamline the portfolio, and focus on the products that actually generate profits.
At last, someone is cleaning up after years in which everyone wanted to become a publicly traded legend…
And as I wrote about it two years ago: for every AM company SPAC merger means death…
Atomic Layer from the Past:
11 years ago, Polish 3D printer manufacturer Omni3D introduced the Factory 2.0, the country’s first industrial-class FFF system with a 500 × 500 × 500 mm build volume. Featuring advanced monitoring and control systems, it marked the company’s shift from unreliable desktop printers to industrial manufacturing.
The transformation proved decisive: after early struggles with the desktop RapCraft 2, Omni3D successfully reinvented itself into a globally recognized supplier of large-format industrial 3D printers.
Read all:
News & Gossip:
#1
While BigRep exits the German stock market, China writes Snapmaker a €130 million check. That's what 1 billion RMB buys: the biggest consumer-3D-printing raise in 2 years, a Series C led by Cathay Capital, with Meituan, Hillhouse and Shunwei piling back in. Six years ago Snapmaker was considered a declining brand. Today it's the best-funded name recently in desktop printing, and the check says one thing plainly: the money in this industry no longer speaks German.
#2
Revopoint, the Chinese 3D-scanning maker out of Xi'an and Shenzhen, has launched a new scanner: the Trackit SR. It's a marker-free optical-tracking rig with 0.02 mm single-frame accuracy, three laser modes, Wi-Fi 6 with no cables, up to 2.5 hours on battery, and a carbon-fiber build rated to work from 100,000-lux sunlight to low-light sites.
A CMM Edition adds a metrology-grade ball plate for on-site accuracy checks. Scan data runs into Revopoint's software: Revo Track for capture, Revo Measure for inspection, Revo Design for CAD. Note the fine print: peak accuracy depends on your PC, and the software is Windows-only.
#3
EOS has partnered with aluminum developer Constellium to widen its metal-AM materials lineup. The deal adds Constellium’s Aheadd CP1 alloy as EOS Aluminium Constellium CP1, available from August 2026, and renames the existing Al5X1 grade to EOS Aluminium Constellium Al5X1.
CP1 targets heat exchangers and semiconductor parts, with simplified heat treatment that skips quenching and enough strength to stand in for many AlSi10Mg jobs. Al5X1 stays pointed at aerospace and motorsport. The wider aim is co-developing more AM aluminum alloys with defined parameters, so customers qualify parts for production faster.
#4
New Zealand’s Zenith Tecnica, a contract manufacturer running titanium EBM for satellites and orthopedic implants, has been acquired by Andrew Burgess and Blair Jordan, who bring backgrounds from Boeing, Amazon’s satellite work, and regulated food production.
The buyers are adding capacity immediately, taking Zenith from six EBM machines to eight, with demand already booking out every system.
Founded in 2014, the company grew revenue 490% since FY2020 and has printed parts for NASA’s Psyche mission.
#5
Now this is interesting, because it’s not every day someone announces they’ve made a “new technology”…
Inkbit, known for Vision Controlled Jetting, has filed a patent application (WO2025041082A1) for a chemistry that drops UV curing. Two fluids jet separately: one carries a monomer and activator, the other a ROMP pre-catalyst.
They mix only on the print, like a printed two-part epoxy, so polymerization can’t clog the nozzles. The fit with their vision-based process control is convenient: a delayed reaction like this needs tight concentration control.
#6
And to close out today's roundup: Formlabs has announced three new printers coming over the next 12 months, though it won't yet say which technologies or price points they'll target.
The news lands on the back of its best-ever quarter: Q2 2026 set records for total, hardware, non-hardware, services, and SLS sales, the last driven by the new Fuse X1. Dental non-hardware notched a fourth straight growth quarter, and Formlabs closed several June Fuse 1+ deals of eight units or more.