This announcement is a little old. I’m trying to catch up. The interesting thing is less the actual announcement than that larger companies have started venture investment arms. Google Ventures has been a boon to that company. We’ll see how they play out in our market segment.
Hexagon AB has assembled a number of pieces into a large industrial technology supplier. Think of its acquisition of PAS a while ago. This news concerns a 100 MUSD investment in Divergent Technologies Inc., a pioneer of green manufacturing technologies with the first modular digital factory for the automotive industry.
Divergent has developed an alternative production process to traditional vehicle manufacturing called DAPS (Divergent Adaptive Production System) that addresses economic and environmental challenges head-on. DAPS is a fully integrated software and hardware solution, creating a complete modular digital factory for complex structures. The patented process combines AI-optimised generative design software, additive manufacturing (3D printing) and automated assembly to build lightweight automotive parts and frames.
The design software optimises the weight, strength and cost of vehicle models. Parts are 3D printed and assembled autonomously, reducing manufacturing time and human intervention. Regardless of the design, part manufacturing and assembly can be carried out using the same hardware infrastructure, enabling quick design iterations or seamless switches between different vehicle models without downtime. The design-agnostic process is less energy- and resource-intensive, delivers more efficient structures faster and achieves weight reductions between 20% and 70% leading to dramatic improvements in vehicle efficiency.
Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Torrance, California, USA, Divergent transforms car manufacturers into agile, design-driven organisations free from capex constraints. A tier-one supplier, its proprietary end-to-end solution is widely applicable to any structure-based, discrete manufacturing process and has already proven to meet the most demanding automotive and aerospace applications.
Protected by more than 500 patents, Divergent’s digital, modular, flexible, and automated production solution produces significantly fewer lifecycle emissions than traditional manufacturing. The company not only leads the automotive industry in breaking down capital, geographic, and environmental barriers, but it also has its own portfolio of hypercars, Czinger Vehicles, which produces the fastest production vehicle in the world – the 21C.
