Reebok and Keurig Green Mountain, two of its beta testers, Marangell says. Reebok, for example, uses 3D printers to make prototypes of soles and other shoe components, he says.
“Reebok makes hundreds and hundreds of parts a week, and they have this huge operation of 3D printing,” Marangell says. “We are about to join that.”
Rize was founded in 2012 under the name File2Part by Eugene Giller and Leonid Raiz. Giller is a chemical engineer who developed inkjet 3D printing technology while working at Z Corporation. Raiz is a 3D computer-aided design software expert who previously held a senior role at PTC and later founded Revit, which was acquired by Autodesk.
File2Part initially developed 3D printing software that aimed to automatically fix errors in design files. The company later shifted gears to focus on building the desktop 3D printer and changed its name to Rize. Marangell joined the company in 2014 and helped it raise $4 million in seed capital from Longworth Venture Partners and SB Capital. Rize currently employs 15 people at its headquarters in Woburn, MA.
If things go well with Rize’s pilot customers over the next few months, the plan is to raise more funds from investors and roll out Rize’s printers to a wider audience by the end of the year.
“We are funded to get to beta and get to market and prove the concept,” Marangell says.
