Desktop Metal announced its plans to buy ExOne during this week's earnings call. The Pennsylvania-based company makes a range of industrial 3D printers that can be used in industries such as aerospace, automotive, defense, and medical. We also wrote recently about the portable 3D printing factories of the company, which are basically mobile additive manufacturing stations that are built within shipping containers.In February 2002, ExOne was awarded $1.6 million by the DoD to help it expand its operations. Each unit includes a 3D scanning machine with computer, a curing oven, fiber reinforced plastic printer, and a compression modeling station.We have been focusing on providing technology to government-type applications for the past two years: DoD and NASA, DoE, ExOnes CEO John Hartner said to TechCrunch at the time that this news broke. People often talk about disruption of the supply chain and decentralized manufacturing. If you like, this is forward-deployed and decentralized. It could be an emergency, humanitarian mission, or frontlines for a fighter in war.Desktop Metal purchased all ExOnes common stock in today's transaction valued at $575million.Desktop Metal CEO Ric Fulop stated that ExOne has been added to the DM family. This will create the best additive manufacturing portfolio for mass production. This acquisition will give customers more options as we use our complementary technologies and go to market efforts to continue growing. This transaction is a significant step towards achieving our vision of increasing the adoption of additive production 2.0.Desktop Metal has been actively seeking acquisitions to expand its 3D printing portfolio ever since it announced plans last August to go public via SPAC. It bought EnvisionTEC in January for $300 million.Hartner stated that Desktop Metal is excited to be able to offer a more sustainable future with our shared vision of additive production at high volumes. Our complementary platforms will help customers better, increase adoption of green technologies and create shareholder value. Our technologies will enable us to drive significant innovations at high production volumes, which can help improve the world.
