Swinburne 3D printing spinout H3D lands $5.8 million Series A

An AI-powered 3D printing startup creating custom healthcare products has raised $5.8 million in a Series A.

H3D emerged from Swinburne University in 2018, its initial investor alongside Starfish Ventures.

Cofounder and CTO Dr Philip Kinsella developed fully-automated design technology at Swinburne. It’s made the startup a global leader in the hearing sector, producing hearing aids, noise protection, and custom-fit earphones.

The Series A was led by Significant Ventures, the VC arm of Canberra’s Hindmarsh family, with support from Swinburne  and new investor Co:Act Capital.

H3D now has offices in Australia, Denmark and Ireland, and pioneered automated CAD (computer-aided design) technology that enables hearing labs to process hundreds of complex, custom-fit jobs in minutes.

The new funding will accelerate the introduction of the tech into dental labs globally, and build on their commercial traction in hearing. A new, smartphone-based 3D scanning solution for custom-fit ear products has also been developed for roll out.

The mobile phone scanning solution uses computer vision, AI, and AR technologies to capture an accurate 3D ear scan with a smartphone camera, bypassing the traditional method of taking ear impressions.

H3D CEO Iain Mcleod said the manufacturing platform can add address a bottleneck in the dental sector caused by a lack of technicians, reliance on complex manual CAD software, and quality inconsistency due to human error.

The AI CAD tech means labs will be able to batch process hundreds of cases in parallel in only a few minutes – while it normally takes a dental technicians up to 30 minutes to complete a single job.

“This funding marks a pivotal step in meeting the future vision of AI digital manufacturing,” Mcleod said.

“Combining machine learning, advanced 3D algorithms and real-time cloud processing into a seamless manufacturing solution will be hugely impactful to patients receiving dental and hearing care. We are extremely grateful to our investors and our customers for believing in H3D’s exceptional team and our mission.”

Co:Act Capital partner Kate Eriksson said: “H3D brings together vision and world-class technology to deliver real value for customers in two fast-growing global markets – hearing and dental.”