Velo3D signs five-year CRADA with Sandia National Laboratories

Velo3D (Nasdaq: VELO) has entered a five-year Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with Sandia National Laboratories, the company announced November 3, 2026. The agreement itself was signed back on January 13, 2026, roughly ten months before the press release went out.

A CRADA is not a contract to build anything. It is a framework. The actual work gets scoped later, project by project, under what the agreement calls Project Task Statements. Nothing says how many of those exist yet, or whether any are funded. Velo3D’s own forward-looking language admits as much: it’s possible no Project Task Statements get entered into or funded under the CRADA at all.

What the two organizations say they intend to explore is more specific than the signing date: part reliability, repeatability across machines and sites, materials development, and workforce development and technology transfer. That second item lines up with the commercial story Velo3D has been building around its Golden Print File methodology, meant to reproduce the same part on one Sapphire system as on another. Whether any Sandia project actually tests that claim is not yet scoped.

CEO Arun Jeldi’s quote frames the deal as “a starting point,” which is an honest way to describe an umbrella agreement with no disclosed funding figure and no stated project timeline. The defense and energy framing matters for a company whose entire pitch, as described in its own boilerplate, is that it builds its metal AM systems in the United States for those industries.

Velo3D says it expects to share findings as the work progresses. Given the ten-month gap between signature and announcement, “as the work progresses” could mean next quarter or next year. The company tracks its own history of funding announcements and program wins on its dated timeline; this CRADA is now a line on it, not yet a result.

For anyone sizing up where Velo3D sits against the rest of the sector, our running list of listed 3D printing companies is the place to check order books and cash positions side by side, since none of those numbers appear in this announcement.

Sources

• Velo3D and Sandia National Laboratories Sign Five-Year CRADA to Collaborate on Metal Additive Manufacturing, PR Newswire, Nov 3, 2026

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