Founded in 2015 by four MIT professors and a team whose previous start-ups have shipped over $1 billion in hardware, Desktop Metal is developing a metal additive manufacturing technology that is 100 times faster than previous additive processes. The company has raised over $438 million from Google, BMW, General Electric, Kleiner Perkins, Stratasys and NEA. At the end of 2019, the company was valued at $1.5 billion. The product was launched in May 2017. Early customers include several Fortune 50 corporations. Desktop Metal believes its products will be major pillars in the realization of Industry 4.0.