Is SpaceClaim Finally Turning Around?

Today SpaceClaim announced that it has received an additional $5 million in new funding from its current investors. Recently SpaceClaim had announced a 253% year-over-year increase in sales and a 188% increase in new licenses. I have not seen such spectacular numbers from other CAD vendors. So these numbers could mean that just about everyone bought SpaceClaim last year. Either that or before last year the total install base of SpaceClaim was rather insignificant. The former seems to be a long shot. But even if the latter is true, it implies that people have started to buy into SpaceClaim, which is probably why the venture capitalists behind the company decided to put more money into it.

So what exactly happened to SpaceClaim in the last year? Firstly, SpaceClaim tied up with ANSYS to bundle their product along with ANSYS 11.0 and 12.0 as well as ANSYS Workbench 2.0 (see ANSYS SpaceClaim Direct Modeler). Secondly, SpaceClaim tied up with Flow International Corporation to “provide 2D and 3D design capabilities within Flow’s Waterjet cutting products”. I am not exactly sure what that means, but it seems like Flow is bundling SpaceClaim along with its machines.

So I am beginning to wonder what kind of a role these two tie ups played in the 253% and 188% numbers quoted by SpaceClaim. I am supposed to meet SpaceClaim CEO Chris Randles and co-founder Blake Courter at COFES 2010 later this week and this is one of the things that I intend to ask them.