If you are a hypercar and technology enthusiast, there is a great chance that you already know Divergent Technologies, a company that has developed one of the most powerful end-to-end digital production systems to replace traditional vehicle manufacturing: Divergent Adaptive Production System (DAPS). With a newly secured Series C funding totaling $160 million, Divergent will further scale up the platform that is at the core of its success.
Along with the new capital, Divergent is welcoming John L. Thornton, former President of Goldman Sachs, Executive Chairman of Barrick Gold, and Board Member of Ford Motor Company, to its Board of Directors. In previous funding rounds, Divergent Technologies raised roughly $200 million from investors including Horizons Ventures and Altran Technologies.
What is DAPS?
By combining generative design, additive manufacturing, and automated assembly, DAPS enables to expand operations, and meet the growing demand among automotive OEMs for design and production of vehicle structures.
With the goal of making the vehicle manufacturing process more efficient and less wasteful using additive manufacturing (AM), the company’s platform replaces the conventional structure design and production process, which is reliant on legacy software, vehicle architectures, tooling and related factory assets with a proprietary, patented, end-to-end system for vehicle design and engineering, volume manufacturing and assembly.
The DAPS software-hardware stack was developed in-house, with over 500 patent filings across the system. This approach enables both low- and high-volume manufacturing without the costly tooling and capital expenses of the past, enabling manufacturers to quickly iterate and invent new product models from anywhere in the world, the company said.
Interestingly, Divergent Technologies is one of the companies you should be ready to take their words for granted as they have already demonstrated the capabilities of their technology with the Czinger Vehicles 21C hypercar. Designed with the DAPS technology, over the past few months, the hypercar shattered the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) production car track lap record by an astonishing six seconds and the Laguna Seca production car track lap record by two seconds.
Of significance, the 21C V8 was designed to use a range of fuels, including carbon recycled methanol and other e-fuels, so it can be run as a zero-emissions vehicle, Divergent explains.
“This funding represents a sterling affirmation of how disruptive we are in the auto manufacturing industry, one that really hasn’t experienced such revolution since Henry Ford developed the assembly line more than 100 years ago,” founder and CEO of Divergent Kevin Czinger notes. “Of great importance, given the global focus on sustainability, DAPS is planet-saving manufacturing in that it radically reduces lifecycle environmental impact by optimizing total vehicle “cradle-to-cradle” efficiency.”
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