The carousel doesn’t stop spinning: how the stock market flirts with 3D printing but still forgets to ask about revenue
3DP War Journal #96
According to the logic of the capital markets, Farsoon today is roughly fourteen times larger than 3D Systems and more than six times larger than Stratasys. It’s just a pity that this isn’t reflected in revenue.
This is the state of the additive manufacturing industry on stock exchanges in 2026. One might ask: will these people ever learn…?
Because consider this: Farsoon Technologies - a Chinese manufacturer of laser-based 3D printers headquartered in Changsha, with annual revenues of around 715 million yuan (just over $100 million) - is valued by the market at approximately 33 billion yuan (about $4.55 billion).
Meanwhile, 3D Systems, the company that literally invented 3D printing and created the entire AM market nearly 40 years ago, generates $387 million in annual revenue and is valued at just $346 million.
Numbers that don’t lie - and numbers that lie to everyone
Let’s put the data side by side. Farsoon closed 2025 with revenues of 715 million yuan and net profit of 69 million yuan. Annual revenue growth reached 45.43%, while profit increased by only 2.68%. Its market capitalization at the turn of April and May 2025 hovered around 33 billion yuan ($4.5 billion).
BLT, or Xi’an Bright Laser Technologies - the world’s second-largest metal 3D printer manufacturer by revenue - reported 667 million yuan in revenue in the first half of 2025, with 17% year-over-year growth. Its market capitalization rose from around $1 billion at IPO to over $2 billion.
And let’s not forget the miraculously revived Velo3D, recently relisted on the NYSE. The company closed 2025 with $45 million in revenue and a modest 12% growth, yet its market cap exceeds $400 million.
On the other side of the mirror, we have 3D Systems, which closed 2025 with $386.9 million in revenue - a decline of over 12% year-over-year. Its market capitalization: $346 million.
Stratasys, creator of FDM and PolyJet technologies, with $551 million in revenue in 2025, is valued at just under $768 million.
Materialise, the Belgian provider of 3D printing software and services, with revenues exceeding €267 million, is valued at merely $329 million.
So we are looking at companies generating three to five times higher revenues, yet valued five to ten times lower.
At present, Farsoon and BLT individually have a higher market value than all other publicly listed AM companies combined.
The legacy players vs “the new breed”
3D Systems, Stratasys, and Materialise are companies that built the additive manufacturing industry from the ground up - literally and figuratively.
3D Systems and Stratasys both serve customers in aerospace, defense, medical, dental, automotive, and consumer sectors, holding certifications across all key areas. Materialise, although smaller than the other two, has for over 30 years delivered Magics software - effectively the industry standard for 3D print file preparation - and built certified supply chains for the medical and aerospace industries. Its certifications and regulatory know-how are assets that cannot be bought overnight at any price.
Farsoon, BLT, and Velo3D are different - focused, specialized companies targeting specific segments. Farsoon specializes in laser sintering systems for polymer and metal powders, emphasizing open system architectures. BLT is effectively a specialized manufacturer of metal laser printers with a dominant position in China’s aerospace sector. Velo3D is a niche producer of metal AM systems and service provider, aimed at the space and defense industries.
All three are valuable and technologically interesting companies. But none come close to the scale of portfolio, market reach, and technological diversification of their “legacy” counterparts.
Where do these discrepancies come from
I want to emphasize that the following considerations are general in nature and refer to market mechanisms as such - they do not concern any specific company mentioned in this text.
The fundamental principle is this: the capital market values not what a company is today, but what investors believe it will become tomorrow.
The problem arises when this “future potential” is valued not on verifiable business fundamentals, but on narrative, macro trends, geographic exoticism, and herd behavior.
The additive manufacturing industry is particularly prone to this dysfunction for several reasons.
First, AM technology is inherently a story about the future. A manufacturing revolution, the end of traditional machining, digital factories - these narratives have real foundations, but their time horizon is constantly shifting.
This creates a space where valuation can grow independently of performance, because “the real breakthrough is still ahead.”
3D printing is an industry that has been about to explode for 30 years.
Second, companies listed on Asian stock exchanges operate in an investor environment with very different cultural and regulatory parameters. P/E ratios of 400–500x, which would be a red flag for Western investors, can be considered normal for companies with strong narrative growth potential.
Third, liquidity and trading volumes in these markets may be more susceptible to short-term speculative impulses.
Why is this dangerous? Because high market valuations have real consequences - for companies, investors, and the entire industry.
An overvalued company makes it harder to raise capital on normal terms (as investors expect growth matching the valuation), exposes itself to painful corrections at the first sign of disappointment, and - perhaps most importantly - distorts the perception of the entire industry.
Institutional investors burned by one overvalued AM company tend to become cautious toward the entire sector.
Desktop Metal: a lesson the market seems to forget
You don’t have to look far for a perfect illustration of these mechanisms. Desktop Metal - a company once backed by Google Ventures, BMW, and Ford - went public in December 2020 via a SPAC merger at a $2.5 billion valuation, briefly becoming the most highly valued 3D printing company in the world.
At the time, in the first three quarters of 2020, its revenue was $13 million. Thirteen. Not billions - millions.
The company never reached profitability. In 2022, Desktop Metal wrote down $499 million in goodwill, followed by another $113 million in 2023, citing sustained valuation declines due to market conditions.
On July 28, 2025, Desktop Metal filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
A company that raised $580 million through SPACs and maintained multi-billion-dollar valuations for years ended its journey selling assets for a total of $17 million.
Fifteen years of building, a billion dollars raised, thousands of pages of pitch decks about a manufacturing revolution - and $17 million at the end.
Yet the investment carousel in the AM industry did not stop after this case. Money continues to flow into companies in ways disconnected from their fundamental value - because the narrative of 3D printing’s future is too compelling for the market to resist.
Tesla and the lesson AM should learn
The history of capital markets offers an analogy that is even more spectacular - and, unlike Desktop Metal, still unfolding. Tesla spent years as a company whose valuation triggered allergic reactions among analysts committed to rational thinking.
For over a decade, its shares were valued many times higher than those of Toyota, Volkswagen, or General Motors - companies generating tens of times more revenue and profit, with global manufacturing, service, and distribution networks.
The justification? Tesla wasn’t just a car manufacturer. It was a technology company, the future of transport, a platform for autonomous driving, an exponent of the S-curve of energy transition.
And for a time, that narrative worked. Let’s take on this example: Elon Musk announced a $25,000 electric car - the Model 2. Investors were thrilled. Then he said it would be ready in 2023. Then he pushed it to 2025.
Then he canceled the project entirely, declaring that the future belonged to robotaxis, not cheap cars.
He invested billions in autonomous driving and humanoid robots to transform Tesla into an AI company. And then reality started knocking in a way that became hard to ignore.
Today, Tesla is facing a downturn difficult to imagine for a company that recently set the pace for the entire EV market.
Global car sales fell by 8% in 2025 compared to 2024, to 1.64 million units - while 2022 projections assumed Tesla would sell that number in the first quarter of 2026 alone. Net profit shrank by 46%.
Robotaxis - the cornerstone of new Musk’s strategy - are operating in Austin, Texas, under human supervision with still relatively high accident rate compared to the average driver.
The humanoid robot Optimus, expected to reach mass production in 2025, practically does not exist as a commercial product.
Cybertruck, the flagship product meant to prove Tesla could build big, rugged things, sold around 50,000 units - just 20% of planned capacity and a microscopic fraction of the one million reservations Tesla once boasted.
JP Morgan analysts estimate that, under a fair valuation, Tesla shares are worth less than half their current market price. Some models suggest that once the speculative premium disappears, the decline could exceed 90%.
And here lies the lesson for the AM industry
For years, Tesla served as proof that narrative-driven valuation works - that the market can and should price the future, not the present, and that technological ambition is worth more than profitability.
But a narrative without fundamentals is a delayed sentence, not an alternative to profit.
It seemed that the additive manufacturing industry should have learned from this - but the carousel keeps spinning.