The biggest 3D printed parts in America right now are not rocket nozzles or car brackets. They are seawalls. Miami based climate resilience company Kind Designs just closed an oversubscribed $10 million Pre-Series A round at a $70 million valuation to scale its 3D printed Living Seawalls, bringing total funding to $21.5 million. The company set out to raise $5 million and says investor interest ran close to four times that, so it doubled the round instead. When investors are fighting to fund concrete printed in a factory, it tells you something real is happening at the industrial end of this technology.
A seawall company with a tech company's numbers
Kind Designs reports $10 million in contracted revenue so far in 2026, a tenfold jump over all of 2025, plus an active pipeline of $175 million and a recently awarded $2 million U.S. Navy contract. Returning investors Mark Cuban and former Washington D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty came back for another round, and NBA forward Kyle Kuzma joined as a new backer. Founder and CEO Anya Freeman describes the seawall industry as a multi hundred billion dollar market that has never had a true technology company.
The product itself is the interesting part. Living Seawalls are large scale 3D printed concrete panels with textured, reef like surfaces designed to hold back water while restoring marine ecosystems and improving water quality. The lineup now includes Living Seawall Tiles, 3D printed artificial reefs, and Living Shorelines. Recent installs include the Fontainebleau, Pagani, and Ritz-Carlton properties in Miami Beach, municipal projects in Miami Shores and Longboat Key, and first projects in New York City, Charleston, and Nassau. The new capital goes toward tripling production capacity by adding printing robots, expanding into New York and California, and growing the engineering team.
Policy is moving too. Miami-Dade County updated its seawall codes to give expedited permitting and environmental mitigation exemptions for these systems, and Florida's SB302 directs the state Department of Environmental Protection to create incentives for Living Seawall adoption. When permitting offices start writing 3D printing into code, the technology has left the novelty phase for good.
My part needs to live outside in salt water and sun. Can a 3D printed part actually hold up?
Yes, if you choose the right material: ASA and glass or carbon filled engineering polymers handle UV and salt spray well, and high temperature materials like PEEK and ULTEM resist chemicals and heat that destroy commodity plastics. The mistake most people make is printing an outdoor part in standard PLA, which softens in summer sun and degrades with UV exposure. A seawall company betting $175 million of pipeline on printed concrete in one of the harshest environments on earth, tidal salt water, makes the same point at industrial scale: material selection is the whole game. For parts that face heat, chemicals, or constant weather, our PEEK and ULTEM printing service covers the extreme end, while ASA and carbon fiber blends cover most dock, marine, and outdoor equipment needs at a fraction of the cost.
I need a replacement part for dock or marine hardware nobody sells anymore. Can someone 3D print one?
Yes: if you still have the old part, even broken, it can be 3D scanned, reverse engineered into a CAD model, and reprinted in a material suited to salt water, usually in days instead of weeks. Marine and waterfront hardware is one of the worst categories for discontinued parts. Cleat bases, chock spacers, pump housings, hatch hinges, and bracket covers disappear from catalogs the moment a manufacturer refreshes a product line. Our 3D scanning and reverse engineering service exists for exactly this situation: send the part, we capture the geometry, rebuild it in CAD, and print it in a material that will outlast the original.
Why this matters beyond Florida
Every buildout wave creates demand for parts nobody stocked. Coastal resilience is becoming one of those waves, with state incentives, expedited permits, and federal contracts pulling it forward. The lesson for makers and engineering buyers is the same one we apply every day in our Rockville shop: the money in 3D printing is not in printing what injection molding already makes cheaply. It is in printing the thing nobody makes at all, whether that is a reef textured seawall panel or the obsolete bracket holding up your equipment install. If you have a part like that, upload it for a quote and we will build and ship it from Maryland.
Frequently asked questions
What 3D printing material is best for outdoor parts near salt water?
ASA is the best all around choice for outdoor parts because it resists UV and moisture, and PEEK or ULTEM are the right call when the part also faces heat or aggressive chemicals. Carbon fiber filled blends add stiffness for brackets and mounts.
How long does it take to get a custom 3D printed part made in the USA?
Most single parts ship within days once the design is confirmed, compared to multi week lead times for imported or tooled parts. Complex reverse engineering jobs add a few days for scanning and CAD work.
Can 3D printed parts replace injection molded parts for small production runs?
Yes, for low volumes 3D printing usually wins because there is no tooling cost, so runs of one to a few hundred parts ship faster and cheaper than cutting a mold. At high volumes injection molding takes over.
Do I need a CAD file to get a part 3D printed?
No, a physical part is enough: it can be 3D scanned and reverse engineered into a printable CAD model, and a drawing or even careful measurements can work for simpler geometry.
Questions about a part you cannot source? Email info@dcadditivepros.com.
Disclaimer: DC Additive Pros is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Kind Designs, the U.S. Navy, Fontainebleau, Pagani, Ritz-Carlton, or any other company or organization named in this article. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Figures cited are drawn from company announcements and industry press dated July and August 2026 and reflect company reported numbers.