Senior Marketing Operations Manager

Cognex Corporation has raised $120 million in a Series C round, though the article primarily focuses on its Q4 2025 financial results rather than a funding announcement. Revenue rose 10% year-over-year to $252 million in Q4, with full-year revenue reaching $994 million, up 9%. Adjusted diluted earnings per share grew 35% in Q4 to $0.27 and 38% annually to $1.02. The machine vision technology company maintained $642 million in cash with no debt, generating $237 million in free cash flow. The board approved a $500 million share repurchase authorization and initiated exit from $22 million in non-core revenue. Cognex expects Q1 2026 revenue between $235 million and $255 million and is implementing cost reductions of $35 million to $40 million annually by end-2026.

Cognex Corporation reported fourth-quarter 2025 earnings of 27 cents per share, beating estimates by 23.85% and rising 35% year over year. Revenues reached $252.3 million, surpassing expectations by 7.17% and increasing 10% annually, driven by strong factory automation spending and logistics growth. Despite solid results, shares have declined 16.9% since the earnings report. The company's gross margin expanded 220 basis points to 71.6%, whilst adjusted EBITDA margin rose 420 basis points to 22.7%, marking the sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year expansion. Cognex generated $72.3 million in free cash flow during the quarter. The company returned $39 million to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends, and declared a quarterly dividend of 8.5 cents per share.

Additive business update: Formlabs, Materialise, Meltio, and more. New appointments, financial results, and sales partnerships. We're well into the first quarter of 2026 and, thus far, the business outlook for the additive manufacturing (AM) industry seems cautiously optimistic. We'll have a better sense of where the industry stands once we get more financial results from 2025, along with AMUG coming up next month and RAPID + TCT in April. There will no doubt be big AM announcements in the near future but, for now, let's take a closer look at the latest business developments in 3D printing. Rob Willett joins Formlabs board of directors. The former CEO of machine vision supplier, Cognex, Rob Willett has been appointed to the Formlabs board of directors. "Formlabs has built an industry-leading platform at the intersection of manufacturing hardware, software, and materials," Willett said in a press release. "The company is uniquely positioned to drive the next era of digital production by making powerful fabrication tools more accessible without sacrificing performance. I'm excited to join the board of directors and help guide the company as it continues to scale globally." The same press release announced that Carl Bass, former president and CEO of Autodesk, would be stepping down from the board after eight years. "Carl has been an extraordinary partner to Formlabs," said Natan Linder, chairman of the board at Formlabs, in the same release. "He brought strategic clarity, bold ambition, and deep empathy for builders and designers. We're deeply grateful for his leadership and the lasting impact he has made on the company." As Formlabs frames it, Willett's addition will bring "global industrial scaling expertise" to the company but, frankly, Bass seems better positioned for that aim, given the relative sizes of the companies they each oversaw. Hawk Ridge Systems adds Stratasys to its 3D printing portfolio. A new partnership between manufacturing provider Hawk Ridge Systems and Stratasys will see the AM supplier's technologies added to Hawk Ridge's growing range of AM systems, post-processing technologies, and professional engineering and manufacturing services. "This partnership reflects our commitment to helping customers deploy additive manufacturing with confidence," said Dale Ford, CEO of Hawk Ridge Systems, in a Stratasys press release. More specifically, the partnership will see Hawk Ridge Systems providing Stratasys' multi-material jetting photopolymer 3D printing (aka, PolyJet) systems, large-format stereolithography (SLA) Neo 3D printers and Origin programmable photopolymerization P3 digital light processing (DLP) solutions. "The partnership with Hawk Ridge Systems is important in bringing our solutions to more customers that are serious about additive manufacturing," said Josh Boggess, general manager and vice president of sales for the Americas at Stratasys in the same release. "Hawk Ridge Systems brings deep application expertise and important proximity to customers. With additive manufacturing becoming more commonplace on shop floors, we are seeing supply chains become more secure, tooling is standard practice and prototyping is speeding up, taking months off manufacturing processes. This partnership helps keep the momentum of industrial additive manufacturing moving forward." Materialise reports 2025 financial results. Based on what I saw at Materialise HQ last year, the company's financial performance in 2025 makes sense. The topline takeaway is that total revenue for the company remained stable at 267,633 kEUR (314,468,775 USD) compared with 266,765 kEUR (313,448,875 USD) in 2024. "In the final quarter of 2025, we reached a major milestone with our successful Euronext listing and the announcement of a strategic share buyback program," said Materialise CEO, Brigitte de Vet-Veithen, in a press release. "These steps clearly demonstrate our commitment to delivering long-term shareholder value." Getting into the details, the company's medical segment saw a 15.4% increase in revenue year-over-year, accounting for the largest share of the company's income, while revenues from its software and manufacturing segments both decreased in the same period by 6.8% and 13.2%, respectively. Medical is clearly the silver lining here for the company, and de Vet-Veithen's comments regarding this year emphasize the ongoing challenges in the other two segments: "We anticipate continued strong revenue growth from our Materialise Medical segment," she said in the same release. "Our Materialise Software segment will complete the transition towards a cloud-based subscription business model, and will continue its investments in a broader AM software ecosystem covering end-to-end workflows. Our Materialise Manufacturing segment will intensify its ongoing shift towards series manufacturing and dedicated focus sectors, but we expect macroeconomic headwinds in the industrial market segments to persist throughout 2026." Meltio partners with AEC on U.S. sales. The Spanish metal AM manufacturer, Meltio, has inked a deal with South Carolina-based AEC, with the latter serving as an official sales and integration partner for the former in the United States. According to Meltio, AEC will play a key role in the distribution, system integration, and support of the company's wire-based metal AM solutions. "By combining AEC's deep experience in advanced robotic welding and turnkey automation systems with Meltio's blue-laser, wire-fed metal 3D printing technology, we can deliver practical, production-ready additive solutions," said Bobb Larmer, CEO of AEC, in a Meltio press release. "This welding-wire-based process gives manufacturers a safer, cleaner, and more cost-effective path to high-deposition, near-net-shape production, repair, and hybrid manufacturing. It's a strong fit with our mission to engineer real-world solutions that improve performance, flexibility, and ROI for our customers." Meltio's technology is already deployed in industrial environments across the US, serving defense, energy and other heavy industry sectors, and the company anticipates that this partnership with AEC will extend its reach even further. "Manufacturers today, particularly in challenging industrial sectors like oil & gas, require additive solutions that are reliable, scalable, and ready for production," said Gabriel Ortiz, Americas channel manager at Meltio, in the same release. "Meltio's wire-laser metal 3D printing system delivers efficiency, flexibility, and operational performance in real-world industrial environments. Partnering with AEC ensures we can extend these benefits to more U.S. manufacturers, helping them optimize processes, reduce costs, and implement production-ready additive manufacturing solutions across diverse sectors." Missed the last Additive business update? Don't worry: we've got you covered.