Formlabs Replaces Founder Natan Linder With Apple Hardware Veteran Dan Riccio

Formlabs Overhauls Board as Co-Founder Steps Down After 15 Years

Formlabs has announced a significant board restructuring that sees co-founder Natan Linder stepping down as Chairman after fifteen years, replaced by CEO Max Lobovsky. The changes arrive alongside a high-profile advisory appointment: Dan Riccio, Apple's former Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, is joining as a strategic advisor and making a personal investment in the company.

Riccio spent 26 years at Apple, where he led the hardware engineering teams behind every generation of the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. In his new role, he will advise Formlabs on product development, manufacturing rigour, and operational scaling as the company expands its industrial SLA and SLS footprint.

What Changed and Who Is In

The full restructuring includes several moves. Lobovsky becomes Chairman, succeeding Linder, who remains with Formlabs as a strategic advisor. Chief Product Officer Dávid Lakatos, one of the company's earliest employees who has led product development for over a decade, is named President and joins the board. Nadia Shouraboura, a director since 2022 who previously led worldwide supply chain and fulfilment at Amazon, becomes Lead Director.

Lobovsky made a point of characterising Lakatos as essentially a co-founder. "Dávid joined just a couple of years into the history of the company, and I think of him as a co-founder as well," he said. "He has been instrumental in building almost every aspect of the company across almost every product."

A Pattern of Public-Company Governance

This is the second consecutive board change at Formlabs designed to swap founding-era representation for operator experience drawn from publicly traded industrials. Rob Willett joined in February 2026, replacing Carl Bass, the former Autodesk chief executive who had been a director since 2017. Willett previously led Cognex, a listed industrial company since 1989. Both Riccio and Willett are also making personal investments in Formlabs alongside their governance roles.

Shouraboura's elevation to Lead Director completes the pattern. Formlabs is putting Amazon-scale operations experience in the chair reserved for oversight as the company widens its manufacturing footprint and pushes into more industrial markets.

Timing Matters

The board reshuffle landed roughly two months after Formlabs launched the Fuse X1, its most aggressive push into industrial territory. The Fuse X1 is a large-format SLS system priced from $84,999 with a 330 x 330 x 565 mm build volume. Formlabs claims production-quality parts in under 24 hours at roughly half the cost per part and three times the throughput of competing industrial powder bed fusion machines. The unit installs in under an hour on single-phase power with no specialised HVAC required.

That product move requires a different type of board than the one that guided Formlabs through its Kickstarter-funded early years. The new directors are not there to celebrate the past. They are there to oversee the infrastructure for whatever comes next.

Chinese Strategic Investment

The board changes arrived alongside another development. Chinese additive manufacturing investment fund Concord AM Capital announced on LinkedIn that it had become a strategic investor in Formlabs, framing the partnership as support for expansion across China and the broader APAC region.

Formlabs has operated a Shenzhen office since 2018. Chinese capital was already present through Shenzhen Capital Group, which invested during the company's $30 million Series C in 2018. The Concord AM Capital investment widens that connection.

How This Compares to the Rest of the Sector

Board overhauls at other additive manufacturers in the past two years have mostly been damage control. Velo3D replaced CEO Brad Kreger in December 2024 after the NYSE flagged the company for market capitalisation and stockholders' equity that had fallen below $50 million. 3D Systems opened a CEO search this month as Jeffrey Graves prepares to retire following a restructuring programme that delivered more than $60 million in annualised savings.

Formlabs is different. The company is making these changes from a position of growth, not distress. The Fuse X1 launch, the expanding SLS materials library, and a resin hardware platform that recently moved to the faster Form 4 all point to a business scaling up, not patching holes.

None of this means an IPO is imminent. Formlabs did not respond to a request for comment on any listing plans. But boards are usually assembled for a specific reason, and the trajectory here is consistent with a company quietly building the governance infrastructure a public listing would require. Riccio's appointment adds a name that genuinely changes the conversation: the engineer who oversaw the hardware design of the iPhone is now advising a resin 3D printing company that wants to sell industrial systems to manufacturers around the world.