Sugar Lab's founders bought their 3D food-printing tech back from 3D Systems

A 'digital bakery' and printer company: Sugar Lab prints custom 3D foods, and Currant 3D sells the CURRANT printer, which binds dehydrated food powders — fruits, vegetables, spices, plant proteins — layer by layer with water jetted from a printhead.

$5M raised at a $16M post-money valuation (2022)

Von Hasseln hacked an old 3D printer to print cupcake decorations for his sister's birthday and stuck on a mission to print unusual cakes and sweets. Sugar Lab was acquired by 3D Systems in 2013, where he and Bozeman built and ran the Culinary Technology division and created the CURRANT 3D Printer from scratch.

The pair left 3D Systems in 2019 backed by their investor group, quickly became the largest purchaser of the 3D printing technology, and in May 2022 went back to their investor network to raise the capital to wholly acquire the CURRANT platform — 'back in the hands of its original inventors', says COO Bozeman.

As of October 2022, the company owns its technology outright, is 3D printing food 'faster than ever', is expanding into a larger commercial kitchen with a 20+ printer fleet, and sells printers and supplies so others can build their own 3D production kitchens.

The founders are the technology's inventors and largest user, so ownership ends the licensing dependence that capped their growth under prior arrangements.

Powder-binding solved the speed and color problem that keeps extrusion-based food printers a novelty; NSF certification makes commercial kitchens a real market.

The digital-bakery-plus-printer-sales model lets the company monetize both its own production and other chefs' ambitions.

Local, on-demand printing with regional ingredients is the sustainability argument the company believes will eventually pull the market.

When a corporate parent's roadmap and an invention's true market diverge, buying your own technology back is expensive but restores the only thing that matters for a niche hardware bet: control.

As of October 14, 2022, Sugar Lab and Currant 3D operate with full ownership of the CURRANT platform, printing at commercial scale in an expanded kitchen and selling printers and supplies, with von Hasseln 'personally driven to make this new technology accessible to chefs everywhere'.