Shapeways

3D printing/manufacturingUSA

New to Unitard

💀 Dead / Bankrupt

Peak $1.4 BillionToday

~-99%

from peak

🦄
Became a unicorn
2021
📈
Peak valuation
$1.4 Billion ’21
💔
Became a Unitard
Jul 2024
💸
Last valuation
Wiped out

Capital raised

$107M

Total raised

$17.2K/day

Raised per day

Total raised averaged per day over approximately 17.1 years from founding to bankruptcy or shutdown. This is not measured cash burn. Methodology

Funding: Crunchbase/Tracxn

Current status

Chapter 7 liquidation (Jul 2024)

The rise & fall

5 moments · 2007–2024

The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.

2007

Founded inside Philips

Spun out of a Philips incubator in the Netherlands, the on-demand 3D-printing marketplace later makes New York home.

Wikipedia

Aug 2021

The peak: a $1.4B SPAC debut$1.4B

Fourteen years in, the marketplace goes public via SPAC at roughly a $1.4B market cap.

SEC filings

2022–23

Losses all the way down

It never turns a profit as costs outrun the niche demand for on-demand printing.

SEC filings

2022–24

From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2022–24

Glassdoor reviewers called it early, arguing the company went public far too soon and the C-suite never grasped manufacturing. The finish matched their fears: a business collapsing overnight, some 200 workers jobless without warning — while insiders suspected leadership had seen it coming.

Jul 2024

Chapter 7 — joins the Unitard Club 💔

No reorganization, straight to liquidation: seventeen years and a $1.4B SPAC debut end at roughly zero.

Court filing

$1.39Bof peak value erased · 17 years

💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.

How it happened

Shapeways ran an on-demand 3D-printing marketplace and manufacturing service, going public via SPAC in August 2021 at roughly a $1.4B market cap. It never turned a profit as costs outran its niche demand, and it filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in July 2024.

Source: SEC filings; SPAC Aug 2021

Where they went

Greg Kress
CEO
Co-Founder at OTTO dms
LinkedIn ↗
Peter Weijmarshausen
co-founder & CEO (spun it out of Philips' LifeStyle Incubator in 2007)
CEO / Co-founder at Humane Genomics
LinkedIn ↗
Robert Schouwenburg
co-founder (left in 2012; helped buy the assets back out of bankruptcy in 2024)
Board Member at Thangs3D
LinkedIn ↗
Marleen Vogelaar
co-founder & COO (left 2014; bought the assets out of bankruptcy in 2024 and is CEO of the revived Shapeways)
CEO & Board Member at Thangs3D
LinkedIn ↗

Current roles as self-reported on LinkedIn, retrieved 2026-08-21. See our methodology.

Disclosed investors (11)

Historical funding participation; lists may be incomplete and do not establish current ownership or investor losses.

* Lead in a funding round · Crunchbase ↗ · 2026-10-13 · Methodology · Leaderboard