In 2017, while most teenagers were figuring out prom dates and WiFi passwords, Ethan Baehrend was building a manufacturing company in Chicago, not a garage hobby but a real company. Fast forward to Feb 15, 2026 and Creative 3D Technologies locked in a verified $5M seed round to scale something audacious: factory scale manufacturing condensed into a modular system called EVO.
Factory in a Box is 3 words that sound cute until you realize what they imply, a single cell that can replace rows of specialized machines and a unit that fits through a standard door but thinks like a production floor. With CoreXY motion, independent dual extrusion, a heated metal enclosure, and modular toolheads stretching across 20+ processes from extrusion to milling to circuitry tracing, EVO brings plastics, aluminum, titanium, and tungsten into one configurable environment where the periodic table meets practicality.
That kind of ambition does not fund itself, and NJP Ventures, MetaLucks, SherVentures, Greenwood, and Tech Bricks stepped up in this seed round with smart capital that understands advanced manufacturing is not a vibe but infrastructure. Total funding now sits at $6.05M across 5 rounds, with this $5M round doing the heavy lifting, no valuation theatrics disclosed, just execution.
Ethan Baehrend, President, Founder and CEO, has been playing the long game since launching the DUO platform as a teenager and earning industry recognition before most founders earn a credit score, and EVO builds on that lineage. At the CES 2026 Innovation Awards, EVO took home Best of Innovation in Supply and Logistics and an Honoree nod in Construction and Industrial Technology, which is not participation trophy energy but signal.
The seed capital is earmarked to scale EVO production and accelerate the semiconductor initiative, the so called Fab in a Box concept aimed at maskless, on demand microelectronics for defense, energy, and advanced manufacturing markets where supply chains are not abstract diagrams but strategic leverage. The company has cited early pilots with the U.S. Army and Disney, treated as company claims.
Zoom out and you see the strategy: start modular, stay capital efficient, blend equity with non dilutive support like the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund, and relocate to Cedar Park with structured job creation commitments including 45 new roles by 2028. Advanced manufacturing is not just about machines, it is about geography, policy, and timing.
Creative 3D Technologies is not selling printers, it is selling proximity, the ability to produce where you think and compress time between design and deployment. In a world that learned the hard way what fragile supply chains look like, Factory in a Box feels less like branding and more like foresight, and you start to wonder how many industries are about to feel the box get a whole lot bigger.
