Velo3D Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Second-quarter revenue rose 52.3% year over year to $20.7 million, while gross margin improved to 21.5% from negative 11.7% a year earlier. Management attributed the gains to higher average selling prices, favorable mix, improved utilization, and operating efficiencies.
  • Positive Sentiment: Velo3D raised its 2026 revenue outlook to $65 million-$75 million from $60 million-$70 million and expects gross margins to exceed 30% in the second half of the year, with positive EBITDA also projected for the period.
  • Positive Sentiment: Demand is reportedly accelerating across aerospace, defense, space, and energy, pushing backlog to $31 million versus $16 million a year ago. Rapid Production Services is expected to reach roughly 25%-30% of revenue by year-end, approximately double last year’s percentage.
  • Positive Sentiment: The new Livermore production campus is expected to triple manufacturing capacity; combined with Fremont, the company expects capacity for about 40 machines by year-end, with production ramping further in 2027. Management said the facility should begin producing revenue-generating parts in the fourth quarter.
  • Negative Sentiment: Although liquidity improved to $91.1 million and debt fell more than 70% to $8.2 million, the company remains unprofitable, posting an $11.5 million GAAP net loss and negative $8.1 million adjusted EBITDA. Planned capital expenditures of $40 million-$50 million are subject to financing availability, and recent equity offerings could dilute shareholders.
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Earnings Conference Call
Velo3D Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, James Carbonara, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

James Carbonara
James Carbonara
Investor Relations Representative at Velo3D

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Velo3D's second quarter 2026 earnings call. Before we begin, please note that today's call will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Please refer to our press release issued earlier today, as well as our filings with the SEC, including our Form 10-K, for a discussion of these risks. We will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures during the call. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP results can be found in today's press release, which is available on the investor relations section of our website. A replay of this call will also be available shortly after its conclusion. With that, I will turn the call over to our CEO, Arun Jeldi.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining Velo3D's second quarter 2026 earnings call. The second quarter represented another important period of execution for Velo3D. As we continue to build on the strong momentum established at the beginning of the year, we are seeing continued expansion across our manufacturing capabilities, growing engagement from strategic customers, and increasing recognition of Velo3D as a critical partner supporting production-scale additive manufacturing across aerospace, defense, energy, and other industrial markets. Our financial performance during the quarter reflected this continuing momentum. Revenue increased 52.3% year-over-year to $20.7 million, driven by continued strength across our aerospace and defense end markets, as qualified programs increasingly transition into production deployments. We believe this performance reflects the continued execution of our strategy and the growing confidence customers are placing in Velo3D as a long-term manufacturing partner.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

From a profitability standpoint, we continue to demonstrate meaningful operational progress. Gross margin expanded to 21.5%, an increase of 33.2% compared to the prior year period. This improvement reflects higher manufacturing utilization, improved production efficiencies, stronger operational discipline, and continued benefits from the strategic initiatives we have implemented over the past year. It also reflects a refinement in the allocation of certain labor and overhead costs to align with operational activities, which Jim will cover in more detail. Our balance sheet strengthened meaningfully during the quarter. We ended the quarter with $91.1 million in cash and cash equivalents, providing greater financial flexibility to execute our growth strategy and support ongoing operations, manufacturing expansion, and strategic investments. One of the most significant milestones this quarter was the launch of our new Livermore Production Campus.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

This investment represents a transformational expansion of our manufacturing footprint and is expected to triple the company's manufacturing capacity once fully operational. The campus is expected to become operational later this year and will serve as Velo3D's primary production and manufacturing center. Beyond expanding production capacity, the Livermore campus represents a critical step in Velo3D's evolution into a data-driven digital manufacturing company. Every production build we execute at our own facilities generates valuable manufacturing data that helps improve our software, process intelligence, and production capabilities. By centralizing manufacturing operations within a highly automated production environment, we expect to capture and leverage significantly more real-world manufacturing data to accelerate the development of our next-generation digital design and manufacturing software platform. We believe this creates a powerful competitive edge as our install base and production volumes continue to grow, so does our proprietary manufacturing dataset.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

That data enables us to further optimize print parameters, improve process predictability, accelerate customer qualification, and develop increasingly intelligent software powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. Over time, we believe this flywheel strengthens every aspect of our platform, from design optimization and simulation to in-process monitoring and quality assurance. Ultimately, our vision extends beyond manufacturing hardware. We are building the next generation of digital manufacturing, enabling customers to design and manufacture complex mission-critical parts anywhere, anytime, on-demand, and without the design limitations of traditional manufacturing. We believe the Livermore Production Campus is a foundational step toward realizing that vision by transforming Velo3D into software and data-powered manufacturing company capable of continuously improve the performance of every system deployed across our global manufacturing network.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Our distributed manufacturing strategy also continued to gain momentum during the quarter through the expansion of our strategic partnership with Mears Machine Corporation. Mears ordered its fifth Velo3D Sapphire XC metal additive manufacturing system with options for two additional systems, further expanding manufacturing capacity, supporting aviation, defense, energy, and space applications. We believe this continued investment reflects the growing confidence our manufacturing partners have in Velo3D's technology and demonstrates how our distributor production model continues to scale alongside customer demand. Expanding our network of qualified production partners enables us to provide greater manufacturing flexibility while strengthening domestic supply chain resilience across several strategically important industries. We also announced a strategic partnership with Aurelia Technologies focused on advancing the use of metal additive manufacturing within next-generation gas turbine systems.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Through this collaboration, we expect to support customers pursuing greater design consolidation, faster product development cycles, enhanced supply chain resilience, and meaningful cost reduction initiatives. We believe partnerships like Aurelia demonstrates the expanding applicability of additive manufacturing beyond traditional aerospace applications and reinforce our ability to deliver differentiated manufacturing solutions across a broader range of industrial markets. Beyond our operational execution, we also continue to strengthen Velo3D's presence within the public markets. During the quarter, we were added to both the Russell 3000 Index and the Russell Microcap Index, increasing our visibility among institutional investors and broadening market awareness of the company. We believe this inclusion represents another important milestone as Velo3D continues to mature as a public company and expand its shareholder base. We also strengthened our corporate governance with the appointment of Lily Mei as an independent director to our board of directors.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Lily brings extensive leadership experience across both the public and private sectors, including her tenure as mayor of Fremont, California, one of the nation's leading centers for advanced manufacturing and technology innovation. We believe her experience in economic development, manufacturing ecosystems, and public-private collaboration will provide valuable strategic perspective as we continue executing our long-term growth strategy. More broadly, customers across our pipeline continues to strengthen. We are seeing increasing interest from aerospace, defense, and industrial customers evaluating additive manufacturing for production scale applications. Existing customers continue expanding into additional programs, while new opportunities increasingly involve larger, more strategic production deployments. We believe these trends reinforce our view that the industry continues transitioning from isolated qualification programs towards broader production adoption. The macro environment also remains highly supportive of our long-term strategy.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Governments and commercial manufacturers continue prioritizing domestic production capabilities, supply chain resilience, manufacturing agility, and advanced technology capable of reducing lead times while improving performance. We believe Velo3D remains well-positioned to benefit from these long-term secular trends. As we bring the Livermore Production Campus online later this year and continue executing against our strategic initiatives, we believe Velo3D is entering an important new phase of growth. Our expanded manufacturing capacity, improved liquidity, growing strategic partnerships, and increasing customer adoption provide a solid foundation for continued execution and long-term value creation. Overall, the second quarter represented another meaningful step forward in Velo3D's evolution. We believe the investments we are making today, including our expanded manufacturing infrastructure, strategic partnerships, and continued operational execution, position the company to support the next generation of production scale additive manufacturing across critical industries.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

While we recognize there remains significant work ahead, we are encouraged by the momentum we continue to see across our business. Our focus remains unchanged, execute with discipline, scale efficiently, strengthen customer partnerships, and continue investing in the capabilities that we believe will drive sustainable long-term growth, expanding profitability, and long-term shareholder value creation. With that, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Jim Suva, to walk through our financial performance in more detail.

Jim Suva
Jim Suva
CFO at Velo3D

Thanks, Arun, and good afternoon, everyone. I am pleased to announce that second quarter results were even stronger than the first quarter results. We continue to see solid execution across the business, which drove an acceleration in our financial results both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. We delivered robust revenue growth, continued improvement in our gross margins, grew our backlog, further strengthened our balance sheet and secured an expansion site that is expected to triple our manufacturing capacity. This comes at a time when we are experiencing continued demand from our customers, which gives us great confidence in the direction of our business. With that, let me walk you through the financial results for the quarter. Second quarter 2026 revenue was $20.7 million, up 52.3%, compared to $13.6 million in the year-ago quarter.

Jim Suva
Jim Suva
CFO at Velo3D

The increase was driven primarily by an increase in the average selling price and an increase in RPS revenue. Second quarter 2026 revenue also grew sequentially, up 50% from $13.8 million in the first quarter 2026. Gross margin for the second quarter was 21.5%, compared to -11.7% in the year-ago quarter and 17.2% in the first quarter of 2026. The gross margin increase reflected higher average selling prices, a more favorable product mix, and refinement in the allocation of certain labor and overhead costs from cost of revenue to operating expenses to align with current operational activities. We are not only pleased with the gross margin improvement in the second quarter, but we also expect gross margin to improve as RPS scales, new Sapphire XC systems are built to order, and positive leverage from top-line revenue growth.

Jim Suva
Jim Suva
CFO at Velo3D

Operating expenses for the second quarter were $15.5 million, up from $10.0 million a year ago. On a non-GAAP basis, excluding $2.4 million of stock-based compensation, operating expenses were $13.1 million, up compared to $8.8 million in the prior year quarter. The increase reflects a return to hiring to support our strong revenue growth and backlog, as well as the refinement of certain labor and overhead costs described a moment ago. GAAP net loss for the second quarter was $11.5 million, an improvement of $1.8 million compared to the net loss of $13.3 million in the year-ago quarter. Non-GAAP net loss for the second quarter was $9.0 million, excluding stock-based compensation of $2.5 million and certain other items, an improvement compared to a non-GAAP net loss of $11.4 million in the year-ago quarter.

Jim Suva
Jim Suva
CFO at Velo3D

Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of 2026 improved to $-8.1 million, compared to $-8.9 million in the second quarter of 2025. As of June 30th, 2026, we had a backlog of $31 million, up from the $16 million backlog at the end of the second quarter of 2025. Our backlog reflects strong demand across our customer end markets. Importantly, the composition of our backlog continues to show year-over-year growth in RPS, fueled by strong demand from our customer base. Moving on to the balance sheet. We had $91.1 million of cash and cash equivalents as of June 30th, 2026, up from $39 million at the end of 2025. We made significant progress on strengthening our balance sheet during the first half of 2026. In April, we completed an underwritten registered direct offering, raising approximately $50 million in gross proceeds.

Jim Suva
Jim Suva
CFO at Velo3D

During the second quarter, we raised $59.4 million in gross proceeds under our at-the-market offering program. We also completed debt-to-equity conversions of $18.5 million, and as a result, we reduced our outstanding debt by more than 70% to $8.2 million as of quarter end. These actions collectively strengthen our liquidity and provide additional flexibility to support ongoing investments in our people, operations, and growth initiatives. Overall, the second quarter was marked by continued execution across the business and an acceleration from the first quarter, driven by strong revenue growth, expanded margins, and a stronger balance sheet, all positioning the company to continue executing on our strategic priorities. The opening of our Livermore, California, expansion site, which is expected to triple our manufacturing capacity, is well-timed to enable us to capture the accelerated demand we are experiencing and move us to the next chapter in the history at Velo3D.

Jim Suva
Jim Suva
CFO at Velo3D

The customer support for this expansion has been overwhelmingly positive, and we are working to get permitting and production ramped up as fast as possible. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Arun.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Thank you, Jim. Looking ahead, we are increasing our 2026 revenue guidance to $65 million-$75 million from $60 million-$70 million, reflecting continued adoption of our Rapid Production Services and expansion of our large format additive manufacturing capabilities across both existing and new programs. We continue to expect sequential improvement in gross margins, with margins projected to exceed 30% in the second half of 2026 as production volumes increase and we realize further operational efficiencies. Non-GAAP adjusted operating expenses are expected to remain disciplined in the range of $45 million-$55 million as we continue investing selectively to support strategic growth initiatives. Capital expenditures are expected to remain in the range of $40 million-$50 million, primarily for RPS expansion, subject to availability of sufficient financing. We continue to expect to achieve positive EBITDA in second half of 2026.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Operator, we can open the call to questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from the line of Jaeson Schmidt with Lake Street. Please proceed with your question.

Jaeson Schmidt
Jaeson Schmidt
Analyst at Lake Street

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just curious if you could disclose how much RPS revenue was in Q2. Relatedly, just given the strength you saw in Q2, how are you thinking about RPS as a percentage of revenue exiting this year?

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

The revenues in RPS has grown double digits from the last year. As I mentioned in the past, the RPS full growth takes about three years. Exiting this year, we're doubling that percentage from last year, which will be about 25%-30%.

Jaeson Schmidt
Jaeson Schmidt
Analyst at Lake Street

Got you. Just as a follow-up, I think previously the goal was to have 40 printers by year-end. Just curious, with this new facility, how you're thinking about the overall fleet exiting this year.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

We're building about 20 machines to 25 machines. I mean, 20 are brand new machines and five or six we're buying back from the field. So about 25 machine capacity. We already have 15 machine capacity built in Fremont. With the new improvements, there is a nine to 10 bay which we're going to keep it here, and the next 10 we'll be deploying to Livermore. So that will give you a 40 machine capacity by end of the year. But the actual capacity ramp-up starts in 2027.

Jaeson Schmidt
Jaeson Schmidt
Analyst at Lake Street

Okay, perfect. Thanks a lot, guys.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Greg Palm with Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question.

Greg Palm
Greg Palm
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Yeah, thanks. Just starting with the kind of more of a broad, high-level discussion on kind of demand, I mean, as it relates to your bookings. What are you seeing from your customer base as it relates to current customers versus potential new customers? And from a high-level standpoint, I'd just love to kind of get more color on what you're seeing across various end markets, because it clearly seems like demand for metal additive technology is really accelerating right now.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Yeah. I mean, there are several bottlenecks, Greg, in general in aerospace and the fields we are serving. Space, defense, and energy markets are booming. You can see there are a lot of new visions and new companies are popping up every day. The defense market with the stockpile and the recent International conflicts has raised a lot of concerns on the manufacturing and the stockpile bring back in manufacturing. That is creating quite a bit of demand and energy markets in general with the data centers and other AI boom, we need a lot of electricity. That is creating a market for specific turbines and both fusion and other ways of clean energy. In the space, obviously there's a lot of space race and multiple space companies now. It's really pushing the limits to speed up their production rates.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

We're running out of space and we're trying to catch up with the demand we have. As I mentioned last year, we have already seen this, right? I mentioned it, we absolutely need 100 machines as of today to actually run all the programs on the demand we have. But they're lagging behind on the production of more machines, and we're trying to keep up and pushing the limits to get as soon as possible. By next year, we'll have half of that capacity, and the following year we'll have half of the capacity beyond 2027. By mid-2028, we're focusing to get all the 100 machines up. Those will be sold before we can actually build. That's how much demand we are ramping up.

Greg Palm
Greg Palm
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

And I guess as it relates to that, your confidence level in being able to build that rate, significantly higher than what you have been doing this year or last. Maybe you can just give us some sense on whether it relates to supply chain or labor or anything else that's on your mind.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Every company goes through supply chain problems. It's not that is more worry for me. My thing is, it's now the demand is higher than what anybody can create today. My biggest problem is getting the people at the skill level growth and then getting alignment with single point failures and creating the double layers of things. That work we have been doing from last 1.5 year, as I mentioned. The last 1.5 year for Velo3D is just purely the stability of the company. Okay? Now we are beyond that point. Now it's a growth phase. The growth phase represents the higher margins, operational efficiencies that you can do with the funds available to the company. The financial struggles in the last year didn't help us to really do what we want.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

This year, we have that stability to create that ecosystem we always envisioned for, and it's ramping up faster. As my vision is coming to fruition, you can always see like what we told we are doing it in sequential form, and it's inevitable that if our adversaries have a 10 million square feet already existent and you don't even have a 250,000 square feet of additive in the country, it's quite evident that we absolutely need that capacity to bring back all the programs. All the production and the prototype models right now is moving on to the productions at a bigger scale. We need actually 300 or 400 machines as of in next one or two years. We can only build 100. Metal additive is so hard, especially when you have specific requirements in space and defense and the precision.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Velo3D is beating everybody on the tech side to prove that point, and we have been doing this for almost seven years on the printing side. Still, I still feel like there's a lot more to go. So there's an absolute need on that.

Greg Palm
Greg Palm
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Yep. Okay. Then two quick housekeepings, if I can. I think you said Livermore operational this year.

Greg Palm
Greg Palm
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Will it start to produce revenue generating parts later this year? Or early next?

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

We're pushing to get that done by fourth quarter because it's absolutely necessary. Fremont is fully occupied. We thought of first quarter, but it's inevitable that we have to get by fourth quarter. We're pushing those boundaries to get that operational and put those machines running to produce parts and also build machines there.

Greg Palm
Greg Palm
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Yep. Okay. Then one for Jim. I think you said there was a reclassification of costs from COGS to OpEx. Can you quantify what that was in the quarter? Is there expected to be an additional amount here going forward?

Jim Suva
Jim Suva
CFO at Velo3D

Sure, Greg, thank you for the question. First of all, it's actually not like an error or not a restatement. As we look forward and with Livermore opening and aligned with what Arun talked about, the opening of Livermore, it's an alignment in job duties. It's really kind of apples and oranges and not really applicable or anything that actually requires us to quantify. It's kind of really a not relevant item to quantify. There's really no numbers behind it because, again, it's an alignment in job duties as we look forward with Livermore opening.

Greg Palm
Greg Palm
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Okay, fair enough. All right. Thanks for all the color.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Thank you, Greg.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Austin Bohlig with Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Austin Bohlig
Austin Bohlig
Analyst at Needham & Company

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on the great results. Wanted to just maybe dive a little bit into the end market and maybe specifically what you guys are seeing in traditional defense. Understanding you guys have some pretty good exposure to the munitions market, missiles, unmanned systems. Those are areas that are inflecting as we speak. Just kind of curious on what you guys saw in the quarter in those verticals and how we should be thinking about demand throughout the year.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

The demand is driven by, as I mentioned before, there is an absolute need for a push on unmanned vehicles and also munitions programs and other engine programs that are ramping up, because every drone you create, every unmanned vehicle you create requires engines, and you can imagine the scale of how fast it has to go to produce thousands and thousands of them. That is a different story. But in the space itself, the ramp-up is heavy on both on the data centers and others, the AI models and also space rocket engines. Multiple existing customers who have proven their prototype level is now going to production level at a high scale and energy markets. To run all this energy market, electricity is the key. Producing some clean energy on various turbines and design changes have led to a greater demand on production.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Anything we talk on space, defense or energy markets in general, if you do a prototype like two years and then they go to production and then they ramp up, it is a three- to five-year program run. That is how we started these programs like last year, going to the prototype and the scale and now in the production of the scale. As I mentioned, that is how the demand is ramping up and ramping up. You cannot create machines overnight. The demand is superseding the existing capacity, and we need to catch up. There is absolute need for our capacity increase.

Austin Bohlig
Austin Bohlig
Analyst at Needham & Company

Okay. As we think about the Livermore facility, could you maybe give some color on how many systems you guys are planning to have operational maybe at the end of this year and as we think about Q1 of next year?

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Specifically to Livermore, like 25 capacity in Fremont and 10 to 15 by end of the year and another 40 machines by end of 2027 is what we are looking. That will bring our total capacity up to 75 to 80 machines. That is the total manufactured and built machines. By mid 2028, we should see about half of that capacity standing in Livermore.

Austin Bohlig
Austin Bohlig
Analyst at Needham & Company

Okay. Then lastly, might be one more for Jim. Just thinking about the revenue cadence sequentially as we make our way in the back half of the year, should we be expecting kind of down sequentially in Q3 and then end of the year ramping up?

Jim Suva
Jim Suva
CFO at Velo3D

No, it is a sequential ramp-up. So quarter after quarter, what we projected is, because it is a capacity game, so increasing the capacity should increase all the numbers. The spend to basically, if the revenue ramps up, your gross profitability increases and that reduces the operational cost, eventually. But the initial CapEx, what we talked and also some operational to increase the production requires some additional hires. So that will increase some operational costs, but we are trying to very strategically balance the revenues and operational costs not to exceed. We are guided to be a bit positive this year, so that should tell you a story.

Austin Bohlig
Austin Bohlig
Analyst at Needham & Company

Okay. Well, thank you, guys, and keep up the good results.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, if anyone has any questions, you may press star one on your telephone keypad in order to join the queue. Our next question comes from the line of Kieran McCabe with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please proceed with your question.

Kieran McCabe
Kieran McCabe
Analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald

Yes, thank you for taking my question. It's Kieran McCabe on for Troy Jensen. I think most of my question's been answered, but I did have one on labor. You mentioned labor and the new facility being located in California to help with labor there. Can you kind of maybe give us some color on the labor markets and the ability to fill positions and things like that for your company?

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

We are actually feeling pretty good. We hired about 16 new hires this year, in a matter of seven months.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

The labor market is pretty aggressive, and the amount of training and skill, what we are in-housely giving them, actually pushing us to get those people. And one of the things we have changed is not only that, it's like we're getting really experienced people to scale these operations, and that's helping us to actually grow faster. We do not foresee that. And the amount of, and the kind of labor we are hiring is not the top level. We are actually hiring more on the technician level because three machines run is done by one technician. We're not planning to hire hundreds and hundreds of them in future, but we're also, by 2027, 2028, the idea is to automate so the existing pool can actually run a whole Livermore facility.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

We are preparing the ground today on the workforce, and eventually to automate to balance that workforce not to have too much operation cost.

Kieran McCabe
Kieran McCabe
Analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald

Right. My second question kind of leads off of that. You brought up automation, but also in your prepared marks, you talked about the data and using large language models and AI. Is really that-kind of derive a lot, is that more to really drive a lot of efficiencies and quality assurance and things in-house? Is there any way that it can also help with, not really that you have a demand issue right now, but really would help with adoption of advanced manufacturing as well?

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Yes. It's not the data just to drive the operational efficiency in-house. For the data, what we are talking is to create a product on a next level software. The software will right now, you take the CAD or CAM or something, you design and simulate, and then you move to the production and all that. And you have to do several prototype iterations to actually fix it. But if you have the real-time data, which we are lacking in manufacturing in general today, because most of these manufacturing capabilities are siloed, and there is no data to pull in all of the efficiencies. So if someone is manufacturing something, they have the data to internally increase the efficiencies and solve it.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

But externally, there is no universal data to actually support the various changes during the process of material build or the parts build-up, and also material studies as they actually melt and do the manufacturing. And also the incident to monitoring and other digital factors will create a software that actually can help you to actually literally change while you build. And also you don't have to do too many prototyping, that reduces the time, and you can go to production faster. So these laws need to applicable to most of the manufacturing in future. So we're building that in-house by creating these datasets and having a hardware pull that data while you are on the floor is most essential part, just like anybody done in the previous times. And that increases another product level of revenue for Velo3D, and that's what we're creating, not just manufacturing of parts.

Kieran McCabe
Kieran McCabe
Analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald

Great. Thank you. That takes my questions.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Yep. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We have reached the end of the question and answer session. I would like to turn the floor back over to CEO, Arun Jeldi, for closing remarks.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

Thank you very much for all the support from my investors, employees, and well-wishers of Velo3D. It's been an 18-month of really hard journey, and turning around a company is not easy. We have faced a lot of ups and downs, and I think we're in a position to thrive now, and this is a year of scaling. From here onwards, what we have mentioned from last 18 months have been proven. Now we're showing the real value where Velo3D is the next generation of digital manufacturings. As we grow, there will be a lot of people throwing stones on us, but we are not worried about those. We are focused purely on the signal and want to achieve what we promised for the future of digital manufacturing.

Arun Jeldi
Arun Jeldi
CEO at Velo3D

This is a pure intention to bring back that manufacturing to our shores and give a lead from our adversaries how we actually make things in the future. This effort will be fulfilled with the dedicated team at Velo3D. I want to thank you again for taking this call and answering and asking these questions. I appreciate each one's effort, and thank you, and have a good evening.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. We thank you for your participation.

Executives
    • James Carbonara
      James Carbonara
      Investor Relations Representative
    • Arun Jeldi
      Arun Jeldi
      CEO
    • Jim Suva
      Jim Suva
      CFO
Analysts