This finally looks like an action movie where the hero doesn’t die. A few weeks ago, Fast Radius Inc., an on-demand manufacturer of metal and plastic parts, announced it had filed for bankruptcy. The announcement was made only nine months after it went public through a merger with a blank-check company.
Needless to say that, shares in the Chicago-based company were down 42% at 17 cents in trading after it filed for chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., late Monday. The stock had been plummeting since Fast Radius was listed through a deal with a special-purpose acquisition company valuing it at $1.4 billion in February.
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The wheel seems to have turned in the right direction for the company whose assets will be acquired by SyBridge Technologies, a global industrial technology company. The company’s wholly owned affiliate, SyBridge Digital Solutions LLC, is actually the winning bidder of most of the operating assets of Fast Radius for the amount of $15.9 million.
SyBridge also intends to make offers of employment to a majority of current Fast Radius employees. Under SyBridge, Fast Radius will continue to operate and build its digital manufacturing and software business and will go to market under the Fast Radius brand name. This transaction represents Sybridge’s fourteenth acquisition since inception in 2019.
As a reminder, Fast Radius has invested over 200 million USD in creating a Cloud Manufacturing Platform. Like cloud computing, they provide a platform of software tools and manufacturing solutions to help engineers design and make commercial-grade parts for a 360 billion USD market. Since 2020, the company has served over 2,000 manufacturing customers and 23,000 software users.
“I am thrilled to be bringing Fast Radius into the SyBridge family. Combining Fast Radius’ leading cloud manufacturing and artificial intelligence platform with our global design, prototyping and manufacturing network materially accelerates our vision of being a leading global industrial technology company. We will be able to support our customers throughout their product lifecycle – from product design, engineering and prototyping through tool production, supportive molding, and finally preventative maintenance and repair. We look forward to bringing the Fast Radius team onboard, and together, becoming the preferred design and manufacturing partner to our global customers“, Byron J. Paul, CEO of SyBridge Technologies, said of the transaction.
“We are very pleased to see Fast Radius become a part of SyBridge Technologies. Our parts and software capabilities align incredibly well with SyBridge’s global manufacturing footprint and prototyping capabilities”, Patrick McCusker, currently President & Interim CFO of Fast Radius, commented.
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