As supply chain issues mount, Fictiv helps companies get from prototype to manufacturing

It used to be getting from prototyping to manufacturing meant long, expensive trips to places like Shenzhen and a whole lot of trial and error. Fictiv was founded back in 2013 to address some of the biggest pain points of bringing products to market. The San Francisco startup runs what it calls a Digital Manufacturing Ecoystem, which is, effectively, a user-friendly marketplace for doing just that.

A startup uploads a CAD file or 2D drawings, chooses parts and manufacturing methods (3D printing, injection modeling, etc.) and the Fictiv system outputs an estimated cost, time and other key information. The appeal of such a system is clear, particularly for young hardware firms. It’s also easy to see why the San Francisco-based startup is gaining even more traction during the pandemic and resulting supply chain issues.

According to CEO Dave Evans, the company manufactured four million parts in 2021 alone. All told, Fictiv says its created 19 million mechanical parts for 3,000 companies.

Image Credits: Fictiv

“The pandemic heightened the awareness of customers and their supply chain issues, which helped drive demand for our services — we manufactured over 4 million parts last year,” Evans said in an email to TechCrunch. “To ensure our processes and security matched our output, we strengthened our enterprise security with SOC 2 certification to back our new enterprise workflow services. Those services accelerate new product development, cut cycle times for engineer-to-order products, and increase efficiency in maintenance, repair, and operations of production-line tooling.”

All that in mind, the company today announced that it has raised a $100 million Series E. The new round more than doubles Fictiv’s funding to date at $192 million. Activate Capital led the round, which also featured Accel, Bill Gates, G2 Venture Partners, Standard Industries, Angeleno Group, Cross Creek, The Westly Group and William Blair Merchant Bank. It’s a lot of companies, but $100 million is a lot of dollars.

“Fictiv has differentiated itself as an innovative digital manufacturing solution that provides not only unprecedented speed but also scalable partnerships that deliver an immediate ROI and end-to-end business value,” Active Capital’s David Lincoln said in a release. “We believe Fictiv is the category leader transforming how companies like Honeywell gain unmatched productivity, efficiency, and enterprise scalability through digitized workflows that dramatically change the speed and quality of manufacturing in markets such as energy, healthcare, space, and transportation.”

Image Credits: Fictiv

The company says the funding will go to — in part — focusing on addressing some of the aforementioned supply chain issues with its platform.

“Fictive frees companies to focus on building new products that serve their customers,” says Evans. “We work in concert with manufacturing partners to help companies rationalize their supply chains and consolidate an otherwise fragmented and unwieldy supply base. Our globally distributed network is by design, far more flexible and resilient than a traditional supply chain.”