Chinese language 3D printer producer Elegoo (Shenzhen SmartPie Know-how Co., aka SmartPie) has accomplished a B+ spherical of financing price over 500 million yuan ($73.3 million).
The spherical was collectively backed by Meituan and its funding arm, Dragon Ball, alongside Guoce Capital, Hillhouse Capital, Minghui Zhiyuan Capital, Shenzhen Capital Group, Shanghai Excessive-Tech Funding Group, and Yintai Capital, and closed lower than six months after DJI took a strategic stake within the firm.
In line with a information report, the funds might be deployed for hiring senior expertise, advancing R&D, scaling world operations, strengthening the availability chain, and broadening the Elegoo model’s worldwide attain.
The capital comes as Elegoo faces a aggressive hole it has to date been unable to shut. Elegoo’s income reached 2.3 billion yuan in 2025, up from 1.6 billion yuan in 2024 and 1 billion yuan in 2023, however that progress has not stored tempo with rival 3D printer producer Bambu Lab, which has pulled the hole between the 2 corporations to roughly 4:1 in its favor.
| 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | |
| Income in RMB (Rounded figures) | 2.3 billion | 1.6 billion | 1 billion |
| Income in USD (Rounded figures) | 328.5 million | 219.2 million | 141.0 million |
Co-founder and vice chairman Chen Bo advised 36Kr, “When the hole widens barely within the early phases, say I’ve 1 billion and my competitor has 2.5 billion, I can assume that with double the hassle, I can catch up. But when three years later, he has 10 billion and I’ve 2.3 billion, it means my earlier efforts weren’t sufficient. You’ve solely put within the onerous work however haven’t achieved any actual success.”
The Value of Closing the Moat
A lot of that divergence traces again to a product improvement failure between late 2024 and early 2025. A brand new machine the corporate had deliberate to launch to seize incremental market progress stored getting delayed, and when it will definitely shipped, solely a monochrome model made it to abroad markets. The home model was by no means launched in any respect.
This failure to ship on {hardware} was, at its core, a failure of code. Whereas Elegoo’s {hardware} had iterated steadily, the firmware and slicing algorithms that govern print stability had fallen behind. Bambu Lab machines now preserve steady operation for over a month between resets, whereas competing techniques require recalibration each two weeks.
That hole has nothing to do with {hardware} tolerances; it’s the results of collected algorithmic information constructed into the software program over time.
To shut that hole, Elegoo approached DJI via an middleman and finalized a cooperation settlement inside three months, with the VP treating the connection as a method to take up a technique. A number of of the {hardware} business’s main manufacturers, together with Bambu Lab, Insta360, and EcoFlow, have core groups that hint again to DJI, and Elegoo is now working to internalize the identical system-level strategy to integrating {hardware} and software program.
Executing that at scale is the place Meituan is available in. The platform, which led this spherical alongside Dragon Ball Capital, is one in every of China’s largest shopper platforms with over 770 million annual energetic customers, and has in recent times been actively deploying capital into AI, robotics, and {hardware}. Its involvement provides Elegoo the assets to execute at a scale the DJI spherical alone couldn’t help.
Elegoo’s income goal for 2026 is 3.5 to 4 billion yuan, and Chen Bo’s medium-term intention is to carry the hole with Bambu Lab down from roughly 5 occasions to someplace between one and two occasions. If the merchandise launched in 2024 and 2025 don’t carry out as anticipated, the founders have stated they may take into account bringing in skilled managers, a place that’s uncommon for a venture-backed shopper {hardware} firm to state brazenly.
Navigating the Excessive Stakes Bambu Impact
Elegoo’s place displays a structural shift throughout the Shenzhen export mannequin quite than a company-specific setback. Creality filed for its third Hong Kong Inventory Alternate IPO try in March 2026 because it confronted mounting competitors from Bambu Lab.
In 2024, Bambu Lab shipped 1.2 million models in comparison with Creality’s 700,000. This parallel signifies that the funding stress Elegoo is responding to is pushed by a basic change within the aggressive economics of your complete 3D printing section.
Market knowledge for This autumn 2025 confirms this reorganization. In line with CONTEXT, Chinese language distributors now account for over 90% of worldwide entry-level shipments, with Bambu Lab holding a 37% market share. Whereas entry-level techniques beneath $2,500 noticed shipments rise 47% yr on yr, demand has stayed concentrated round what CONTEXT describes because the “Bambu impact.”
By resetting the performance-per-dollar benchmark, Bambu Lab has made software-driven stability a prerequisite for market participation. For Elegoo, this 500 million yuan spherical is the mandatory price of defending its place in a market that has consolidated round a brand new technical commonplace.
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Featured picture exhibits Elegoo spotlights its 3D printing ecosystem at RAPID + TCT 2026. Picture through Elegoo.