re:3D, an Austin startup that makes large-scale 3D printers, won WeWork's Creator Awards Wednesday night. The victory, announced at a big show at Madison Square Garden in New York City, comes with a $1 million prize to help the company grow.
“We’re just trying to take it all in, and really appreciate what this opportunity is going to mean for us,” Samantha Snabes, founder and Catalyst for re:3D, said in a news release. “We couldn’t be more honored to have WeWork as a partner. There’s been very few people since the beginning that have really bet on this concept we had in 2012: to make a toilet-sized 3D printer powered by trash. To know now that this is going to become a commercial reality in 12 to 18 months, it’s just mind-blowing.”
What a night. Here’s to @re3Dprinting and @GV2020_org for taking home $1M. #creatorawards pic.twitter.com/ER08RpoBNa
— WeWork (@WeWork) January 18, 2018
Before the awards show, re:3D posted a blog that talked about how the company might use the prize money.
"Winning the $1 million would provide us the financial resources to not only refine our pellet printer prototype to accept ground-up plastic water bottles, but also to allow us to engineer a grinder, dryer, and feeder system to allow people to truly manufacture from waste onsite," they wrote.
WeWork's Creator Award global finalists went into the night expecting that one company would be named as the winner of a $1 million prize. Instead, WeWork Co-Founder Adam Neumann awarded $1 million to a commercial business -- re:3d -- and a $1 million award to a nonprofit -- Global Vision 20/20, which provides prescription glasses to people in underdeveloped nations.
The champions were selected from a big group of finalists from WeWork's regional Creator Awards. You can see all the Austin winners here.
WeWork spread an additional $2.2 million across other startups in the finals -- one from each region. The $500,000 winners included CADUS (Berlin), Andiamo (London), EyeControl (Tel Aviv). The $360,000 winner was Byte Back (Washington, D.C.). Finally, $180,000 winners were Eat Offbeat (New York City) and Bunker Labs (Chicago).
Learn more about re:3D's latest efforts in this video:
