a16z Podcast - a16z Podcast: The Next Phase of 3D Printing

Episode Date: November 19, 2014

In this wide-ranging discussion about the latest and next consumer and industrial applications for 3D printing, we examine (with Shapeway's Carine Carmy and a16z's Tom Rikert): how the software-driven ideal of product-market-fit may be achieved in physical products, too -- with rapid prototyping through 3D printing; how the ability to manufacture on-demand changes traditional notions of seasonality and inventory management in product cycles and development; and how the long tail of 3-D printing means being able to have a market of 1. The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments and certain publicly traded cryptocurrencies/ digital assets for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/. Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.

The content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal business, tax, or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. For more details, please see A16Z.com slash disclosures. Hi, welcome to the A6NZ podcast. I'm Sonal from the editorial team, and I'm here with Corrine, who's the head of marketing at Shapeways, and she's been there for the past three years, so she's really seen it, she's really seen the 3D printing service and marketplace grow there. And I'm also here with Tom Reichert, who is a partner in the investing team. And previously, he's had gigs at Autodesk and Silicon Graphics. So he knows a lot about this space as well. But the reason we're talking about this today is because one thing that we talk about a lot here, obviously, is the theme of software eating the world. But as software eats the physical world, I think the question a lot of people have is how do you bring our expectations of software-like behavior, like rapid prototyping

and being able to just put things out there quickly when you're dealing with physical objects. And I wanted to know if you guys had any thoughts there. Sure, hi. And I think maybe to take a step back before we dive in, let's just get a baseline understanding of 3D printing because it's been a lot of hype in the market and sometimes, you know, we used to say it's all lasers and magic,

which is probably not very true. 3D printing at its core is a manufacturing technology, and it's digital. So it's all additive, and you take some kind of material, and you're building up layer by layer. The biggest difference with traditional manufacturing is that there's no mold. So that creates a freedom in both design but also cost because there's not this upfront capital. That's just kind of the basics that we should all agree upon.

Yeah, and I think one thing is very unique about 3D printing is that you can print the simplest objects to the most complex objects. It's all the same to the 3D printing system. So you can print things that before could never have been manufactured with traditional techniques. And they're stronger and lighter. in some cases more beautiful than they could have been done in a traditional setting. Oh, that's great. So why is 3D printing interesting in the context of software eating the world then? Like, how does that connect for you guys?

Well, you touched on the word rapid prototyping, and that's kind of been the core of 3D printing for decades. So, you know, large industrial firms were making big prototypes before they would go to market. The materials have gotten so much better that you can actually do what we like to think about is rapid product development. So you quickly get a product, an MVP, to market, and all of a sudden you can get feedback from your customers like, hey, no one actually likes this. Maybe let's not go spend years developing this further, or all of a sudden you've got a runaway hit. So you're actually able to iterate with your customers, which is a very big shift from how products are historically made.

Yeah, if you look into the labs at Apple Computer, right, the rumor has it, they have lots of mold, so they have all these different form factors for different devices, and they, you know, manufacture these one-by-one to simulate what it's like to have a new device. device. And so, you know, 3D printing brings that kind of capability to any designer, right? And what people used to be able to only design web applications and mobile apps, now they can design physical things with the same fluidity and actually have something in their hand to test. What happens when that happens? I mean, when you can do that, that changes a lot of things, I mean, about inventory management, you know, products, release cycles. I mean, what are the implications of that? I think fundamentally, and you just touched on this word designer, at its core, it's changing who can be a product designer. It's changing who can be a part of this process because there's not

the mold, there's not the capital. Even marketing historically is almost invented to kind of take a product and that has to be mass produced. You need to make sure there's going to be enough demand. And so if you just are making something for yourself, all of a sudden you can say, hey, are other people interested in that. And that's a lot of the products we see on our site are actually quite niche and long tail. And when you think about them, I'm like, I don't know if someone needs a raspberry pie case with a my little pony on it, but you know what, there's actually a market there, and you're not bound by those traditional concepts of product market fit historically that required scale in a different way. It's kind of changing this pressure,

you know, to be able to have, before you go to market, you need historically, you would sit down with a focus group and you'd say like, hey guys, what do you think about this? Who knows if that focus group is actually the right group of people to talk to you? And it's just in general, this classic notion of everything has to be ready before you go to market. the software sense, that's crazy, you would actually put something out there. You would test and you would even A-B-Test and see what would happen, and you can actually do that with products today. So we're actually seeing people go to market with things that might not actually have demand and all of a sudden take off. For example, there were these guys who have diabetes

and they have MotoX phones and no one was making a case for the phone that could hold their diabetes monitor and all of a sudden they just put it out in the market, huge demand from that community. And the hashtag on the side said, we will not wait. You know, so they're not going to wait for traditional manufacturing to meet their needs. Yeah, I think there's an interesting movement, too, around artisanal products, you know, kind of more unique, personalized, custom-built, handcrafted, you know, like all these things that we always have admired in terms of, we want to be different, we want to express ourselves.

And I think 3D printing is making that more available where, you know, anyone can say, you know, I want a product for me and they can now have a means to produce it. And, you know, ultimately this could become not just kind of cottage industry, But it's the way I think mainstream products are going. You look at products at Nike offers where you can personalize all sorts of aspects of your shoe. It's not 3D printed per se, but there's a push, right, for more personalized products. And I think the same thing's happening kind of right now at this hobbyist level. It will move itself up into the more mainstream products.

So that's actually really interesting. But how do we actually move it beyond the niche to a broader audience? Like what are some of the things we need to do to unlock the potential of 3D printing for a broader audience? Do we want to? yeah so I think there's an issue in the first stage of producing something is designing something so there's this design literacy problem right and that most people are not good at starting with a blank page or blank computer screen and creating something so I think what we need to find is ways for you know someone who has inspiration can can tweak and modify and personalize

something that's already there right and I think that there's already lots of repositories from any 3D models but I think the innovation that now has to happen is is how do you put the knobs and dials in the right places so people can be kind of guaranteed some successful output as they tweak it. So kind of those kind of guardrails in the design process so that they have that instant gratification. It becomes more of a consumer or at least kind of non-trained person's domain, right? That's interesting. What's your take on that, Kareen? Because it's interesting to, that's a really interesting theme to us because we've seen with products like 53's mix,

which doesn't expect you to start with the blank slate on your tablet that you can take existing. ideas and kind of rebuild and mix them. And even with Pinterest, I mean, people are, you can repin things. You don't have to, like, actually upload a photo that you've taken, like, of a beautiful sunset on your own. I think that theme is really interesting. Like, how does that work for what you're saying? Yeah, I do agree. And we've actually seen in our research, people are not looking to start with a blank page. They do want to tweak or tinker. You know, they want to be a part of the development process. They actually want to even feel closer to the designer, but they don't today self-perceive as the designer. I think software definitely is the

biggest challenge in the landscape today, not only for consumers, as you're talking about, but even for designers. Because a lot of the 3D software that was created was made for actually rendering. So like beautiful animations you would see Pixar movies. That does not have anything to do with gravity. So you see these designs come out and all of a sudden like the arm breaks off in production. And designers are not getting that real time feedback on the manufacturing constraints when they're actually designing. So I think that remains a big challenge. And then coupled with that materials. About a year ago, we were in a much worse place. So I think I'm far more optimistic than I used to be. You know, we now have 50 materials on our site. When I started, we were less than

10. And so, you know, there's more innovation, but you still don't have the level of R&D in the space that you do in many other industries. Yeah. And you're starting to see innovation where 3D printing companies are making 3D printers are now saying, well, how do we tightly couple the software so that when you're designing something, it takes into account, the material and like the physics so that when you print it out, like, it doesn't break. So there's some basic things that are just starting to really be solved now in a more packaged way. You know, you think of kind of the, you're a Macintosh and like the printer driver and the printer utility. Like that's that kind of level of abstraction and kind of ease of use to print things in 3D is just starting

to go more mainstream. Yeah. And we're just even getting more data about that in our own manufacturing process. So we've made over millions of parts to date. It's actually taken that long to figure out what can you actually make with certainty. And we use these big industrial machines, a size of a fridge that we're always used for prototyping, historically, you would just fill one product in there. We're putting a thousand products in each print run, and then we're hot swapping them because we don't want to ever stop the machines. And so we're using this technology in ways that it was not intended to be used. And sometimes that can be frustrating for a designer, because why can't I make it thinner? Why can't I, you know, be more flexible?

And so we're kind of in this balance between almost, you know, mass manufacturing and 3D printing, which some people call mass customization. You know, what is that space where you can get exactly what you want that meets your needs, but it's still able to be produced pretty quickly. Yeah. And I go back to Apple, the desktop publishing revolution, you know, and then they kind of did your, become a, you kind of a mix master for your own music, and they had, you know, rip, mix, burn, you know, was the slogan. So I think in 3D printing now, it's going to be like kind of rip, mod, fab, right? You know, like, how do you scan in a design or take a design it's already there, how do you modify it, and then how do you fabricate it? I think they

one of the key challenges I see in the venture side is how do you think about digital rights management? So the mod part is really challenging. How does the owner of the IP, you know, the object of design, build in business rules so someone, you know, the mass market can take it and change certain aspects, but there's still value that accrues back to the original designer. So I think that's a key challenge to solve. How are people dealing with that issue that you see Kareen, like what's coming up there? What are some of the things that are happening? Yeah, it's still early stages for digital rights management, in large part because you know, even DMCA is really only covering one part of the physical realm.

And by DMCA, you mean the Digital Millennium Copyrights Act? Yes, exactly. And so that is covering copyright, but not trademark or patent. And so for people who are riffing off other people's designs, there is a big question about where does one design start and one design stop. What we're seeing is some brands like Hasbro are opening up their IP, which is pretty innovative. But there are very few companies who are doing that yet today.

It is typically a revenue share, but the models are just pretty nascent. And I think historically, companies, if you look at even social media, at first when social media was put out in the market, brands were a little bit uncomfortable saying, let's have a conversation with our customers. Now, if you don't respond to a tweet, you know, you're going to basically be perceived as inauthentic or, you know, like a bad company. Same thing will happen with product design and development. So if you don't let the customers in eventually, you're going to be perceived as old school. but like what does the company benefit from beyond the perception of being perceived as old school there are plenty of companies that still do things in old school way like what do they actually get out of it

like by opening up their IP in that way i mean i think if you're able to actually let your customers into the conversation they'll help define the product in a way that meets their needs in a much more efficient way maybe this is a marketing perspective but if you don't listen to your customers you're not going to make great products and so listening has historically been very hard in a product development sense because the cost of manufacturing is so high. You know, you have to wait six months between iteration cycles. It's pretty different in the software space. So if you actually can listen to your customers, let them in, you can make better products and hopefully make more money. So let's play this out more long term. Like what happens when there are, there is enough of this

type of rapid prototyping happening? Like, what does that mean? Like, how does it change the supply chain, you know, the inventory management, the seasonality of products? Like, what happens with that? Yeah, I think if you look at the long, long term, I actually would be short on FedEx and UPS. You know, like rather than having to ship things around the world in airplanes, it wouldn't be great just to download the design and print it out, you know, right where you are. So I think that's like a long-term disruption. But in shorter term, yeah, I think once you can go from printing items with just form to printing items with function, then I think that what you're talking about gets more interesting.

By function you mean like printing electronics. Well, printing objects, you know, a working replacement part that go into a production piece of machinery, right? And they're starting to do this for, you know, jet engines, so on. So I think we're starting to see signs of that. And that's where, you know, if you're, you know, looking at very high costs, you know, high utilized things like airplanes or ships, it makes a lot of sense. I still don't see that right around the corner for, like, your, you know, Napa auto parts. Right. You know, like I think it's going to be more kind of a specialized situation where, like,

The cost or time is so critical that you'll have a 3D printer on site. Yeah, we've seen actually one, only a few companies are starting to upload their spare parts to our site. One of them is a DJ synthesizer company. So they're based in Sweden. They create these beautiful, essentially synthesizers for DJs. And if I were to have to replace a small knob, it would cost me $25 in shipping and production. And now I can actually just download it, print it at home or buy it online for $3. And that economics makes sense for the customer and the brand itself.

So one of the things that Carl Bass, who the CEO of Adidas says when he talked about, you know, some of the myths and misconceptions around 3D printing is that we need a different kind of Moore's law for 3D printing because while 3D printing has unfettered scale, you know, you can, whether it's as complex as a 20-sided object or a two-sided object, it doesn't matter. It's the same thing to the computer. But the volume is an issue, and that's where the costs of the materials can get prohibitive. So what are your thoughts on some of the, you know, limitations there? And will we be able to overcome that on the material side? And the economics there, will they make sense? Or do we just never get there? Does this just live as a complementary technology?

Like, what happens then? Yeah, I mean, I think there's the reality that, unfortunately, it is very expensive to produce big parts with 3D printing. And so we are seeing a lot more small parts. Jewelry has become a massive market because of that, even gadget accessories. To be honest, I'm not sure what it will take to shift that. I think we would need a lot more R&D that we haven't had in the space, both in terms of materials and in how the machines operate. Right now, you're basically limited that once a print starts, you kind of have to let it go until the end. Otherwise, everything in that tray does not work, it will crash.

There's many complications in that production process. So there's innovation in how those machines are operating. Then maybe we can actually bring down the cost for larger parts. Yeah, I make a comparison to your modern microprocessor, right? Like our CPUs aren't getting any faster, but they're getting multi-core and multi-threaded, so they work in parallel. And it may be the case that you'll have a cluster of 3D printers and you'll have software that, farms out the big complex part into many printers and they'll all work in parallel and kind of proceed to output pieces and they'll be reassembled. So that could be a viable way to tackle

some of those challenges. I think that's actually really interesting because that's like taking a more modular approach to the production process and then sort of figuring out which parts they do that way. It's kind of analogous to what happened in the semiconductor industry actually when we shifted from having only industry fabs make chips and then moving to VLSI design. So this is almost like an, this is almost like an inversion of that. But anyway, what about the ecosystem for 3D printing? I mean, the reality of 3D printing has actually been around for years, decades, in fact. So what's different? Like why, I think the big thing here is that the ecosystem has come up around it. So could you guys talk more about that? Yeah, when we look at the ecosystem,

I think you can talk about materials, the actual printers themselves, the software, and then just the applications and use cases. So I think because of material innovation, we started seeing an expansion and product categories, which is then opening up the consumer market and getting more people involved. So before metals, you couldn't make jewelry, right? Or you could, but I don't know how many people wear plastic jewelry. And so all of a sudden you see many more people buying these products and then much more innovation on the material side, which then questions on the software side, well, maybe people want to make their own jewelry. What kind of software do we need for that? So I kind of always go back to the material because that's the core function of what

you can make. But I still think one of the biggest challenges is that there are very few products in our, even just looking at the room around us that are single material products. And that is still the biggest issue today that you can only print in one material at a time. And even changing the materials for one machine, if they can handle, can actually take days to kind of swap it out. So that is still one of the biggest challenges. Yeah. I also add that if you look at the different players in creating a, you know, a print, right? There's different companies who think about the software, different companies who think about, like, production, and then there's sometimes logistics, kind of third-party logistics to ship it or package it,

you know. So I'm starting to see signs that are going to be these kind of industrial clusters, kind of like a little kibbutz of companies doing these kind of artisanal products, and so you're going to have people under the same roof, you know, like these little industrial clusters who are doing these kinds of short-run, you know, highly innovative new products. And so I think that's where you get economies of skill, at least at a small level, and help try out new things. That's a great point because I think so much of the labor in our process is actually after the printing. So you're doing a lot of post-production, even thinking about assembly, it's not like the printer's putting the chain on the necklace or the batteries in the accessory. And so if you're

able to think about what's the next stage of kind of collaboration after production, that's kind of the big question for us, at least. One of the things that we learned is that this historic notion of seasonality. So you put something in the market and then three months later, you know, it has to go on the shelves or, you know, you need to lower the price to get rid of it. That doesn't necessarily apply in 3D printing. So last year, of the products that we sold in our marketplace, half of them were actually designed in 2011, 2012, which means that not only are the designers kind of continuously making money in their sleep, but this notion that something that is old is worth less is going to shift quite dramatically. So what we're seeing

is that there's this long-tail demand. So you can really create almost anything for whatever niche you have, that's not super time sensitive. So if someone goes online and says, I need this accessory for my camera, and they're able to find that. And some designer could have made that several years ago. Historically, if it was mass produced, they may or may not be able to find that. It depends on, you know, if there's inventory left over. With 3D printing, that inventory is kind of timeless. And so what we saw in 2013 was that half of the products that were made and actually bought that year were designed years before, 2012, 2011. And so it didn't really matter when the designer had the idea and when the consumer needed it, but that kind of connection

was always possible. That's so interesting. So what happens when that happens to a marketplace? Like, what does that change for how people think about their seasonality of their products? Like, do they never have to worry about it anymore? I mean, what does that mean for people who create products? I don't know if that, I don't think things will change necessarily that much because I think it's this community dynamic, you know, what's hot, like that can change. Maybe the accessibility doesn't change. You can still get to the product. But, in terms of what people are going to be choosing to wear that season, I mean, that's a kind of a real-time decision. And those trends are probably going to stand regardless. So I think maybe

it's more, you know, this kind of time-shifting kind of product availability. You know, that'll be more, that'll be great for kind of utility products, but for fashionable products. It still might be driven by just the pop culture at the time. Oh, yeah, I think that's for sure, because I think fashion is much more than individuals deciding we, it's like, that scene from Devil Wears Prada. I don't know if you guys have seen that movie, but it's this very funny scene where the character, the main character, Merrill Street character, turns to her and says, that blue shirt you're wearing was decided by like a million people before you mock that because she was making fun of the fact that they were putting so much thought into her blue

sweater, a blue sweater matching a skirt. Anyway, there's a pretty good analogy too in kind of either literature or content. So, I mean, great content will live for a very long time, and it's timeless in that sense. So if it's a great design or it's needed by someone like that can have longevity, and digitization just makes it easier to access wherever you are. Okay, so just talking more about this whole theme of mass customization, I mean, first of all, the reality is that what we're calling, what people currently call personalization is really just reconfiguration, and what you're talking about is actually true mass personalization and mass customization.

But beyond that, do people actually really want to create their own products? Because I think we have a tendency sometimes, I'm very pro-maker, but to glorify the maker. and the reality is like, I don't always like the things that I make. I mean, do people really want to create their own products from scratch? I think it's a great question. And where we've actually seen people, there's a desire to create your own products is where there's a need that's not yet met by the market. So, you know, when you think about 3D printing, ooh, ah, amazing technology,

but what does it actually mean for me? That design process always starts with the need. And so designers are typically more well equipped to start answering that question using design principles and then they actually develop the product. But consumers are not there yet because we haven't been trained in the same way. I think maybe in the next generation, as kids are growing up with these tools of design and they have access to printers in their classroom, they might think differently about it. But most of the customers we talk to are not actually interested in creating their own product from scratch, but they do want to be a part of that design process. They use language like, I want to tweak or tinker, or I want to put my stamp on it.

They even just want to be closer to the designer to really kind of feel their impact. But that's also not for all products. I mean, do you really want to customize, like, the bottle of soap that's sitting in your bathroom? I don't know. It just depends how much you like soap. Yeah, and I look at YouTube as maybe a proxy here. Like, the majority of people at YouTube don't, you know, they don't create videos. They watch it.

But you look at, well, how many people actually sit down and create videos? Like, a lot of people have begun to do that, right? A lot of people have made it from a hobby to, you know, a big investment in their time and creative energies. And, you know, if that's happened in creating video, which used to be. be perceived is really hard. Maybe it will happen in building physical things too. Yeah, I think actually that point on if you start to see people who are doing it, how does that shift what you think is possible for yourself? We did a Google Consumer Survey, which is kind of the equivalent of a gallop poll and statistical significance. And we asked, you know, do you know anyone who

makes themselves their own products? And two and five Americans actually do, which is actually a pretty sizable number. So if all of a sudden, you start to think, well, if they're selling something like, why can't I, and whether they're actually going to be creating them using 3D printing is kind of the next step. Is there ever going to be a point where we actually don't care how things are made, whether it was 3D printed or manufactured subtractively or in any other way? Like, is that a possibility with this space? Like, when is that going to happen? I mean, I think that's the fact that we don't necessarily care about how things are made has often been true in society. And so, you know, I didn't even really learn about injection molding until I started working at Shapeways. And so

I think people actually care much more about the implications of production. So does that, you know, improve waste or does it actually, is it produced locally? Am I supporting someone near me? So people care about those values, but not necessarily the how. I think we've been excited by the technology because it is democratizing and all of a sudden anyone can be a designer and that's a huge shift. But if you really look at this ring that I'm wearing, which you guys can't see, you know, it's a beautiful silver ring. And to be honest, I love that it was designed. and I love that I know the designer, but I don't really care that it was 3D printed. Just a follow on point to waste and kind of the implication of how things are made. I'm excited to see the first company makes a 3D unprinter. Like when there's going to be a machine where you take your 3D printed object and throw it back in and it like melts it down and recycles it. And that would be a great life cycle, you know, kind of the bookend on the other side

of how do you take something and just continue to refabricate using the same, you know, the same material. No, that's great. So what are, just to close our thoughts here, like, what are some of the things that you're seeing that are happening now, some shifts, any interesting directions we can expect in the space? We've always been very focused kind of on end designers and typically independent designers, and we're definitely starting to see more and more bigger companies and bigger brands get in the space. I think part of it is just a natural reaction. There's something big happening. We should be a part of it. But the second part is actually saying, hey, can we actually work more closely with our customers

or help them personalize products that we are putting into the market? And I think that could actually help 3D printing become more mainstream in a sense and less of the hype, but actually just more of, are there relevant products that people can relate to? We're seeing that on the long tail, but kind of not yet in the head of the tail. That's interesting. How about you, Tom? What are you thinking? Yeah, I think on the industrial side of things, there's been innovations in printing in metals, printing in polymers,

and not just doing parts that are going to be, prototypes or kind of design examples, but like production parts that have the strength properties and the heat resistance and so on, or the sake of medical applications, things that you could actually implant someone's body. So I think those companies have arrived, and now they're kind of like starting to just iterate and improve. So that's exciting. I think that's kind of key ingredients to getting to a more mainstream use of 3D printing. Today we've often focused on printing objects with form, mostly plastic trinkets, So now it's starting to be printing objects with function, right?

Like either it may be electronics inside or it might be just multi-materials or it could be a bigger object because printers are getting more capable with big objects. And that's where it gets exciting because then it's not a novelty, which is kind of an accusation on a lot of 3D printing things early on. But it's actually like something I would pay for and use and it's, you know, it's part of something bigger than just, you know, kind of something to put on your mantle. That's actually great because I think the perfect example of printing 3D objects with function is this recent spade of stories and it seems like there's not one but like five every week about a 3D printed cast saving, you know, healing someone in less than 80% of the time, a 3D printing heart saving a baby's life, a 3D printed body part giving touch that people never had before. I mean, I think that's a great example of it actually playing out in other ways. Can I just one thing about the healthcare space, which is so interesting. So the economic of 3D printing, don't always beat traditional manufacturing, obviously, otherwise we would be, you know, sitting with printers around us all the time. But where it does work really well is for complexity, as you said before, for personalized products and then also for kind of low demand products. And I think that's where the body becomes the best application, things that fit you perfectly that are highly complex like organs and, you know, that really need to be just for you. And that's why I think it's so exciting to see the heart that, you know, can be replaced or the beak for the eagle or all of these stories. are just classic examples of the technology in its best. That's great.

Thanks again for joining us today, Kareen, and thanks, Tom, for joining us. And that's a wrap of this week's A6 and Z podcast.