On 18 March 2026, Czech media reported something that had never happened at Prusa Research: its first mass layoff. About 70 non-production roles were going, at a company with nearly 1,200 people. Sales since January had not reached even 90% of target.
This was not a company in collapse. In 2025 it built 122,359 printers. In 2024, the latest year with reported results, revenue rose to CZK 3.65 billion, but net profit was only about CZK 47 million. A business can grow and still get squeezed, and Prusa is one of the best documented examples in 3D printing.
How it started
Josef Prusa joined the open source RepRap project in 2009, aged 19, and left his economics studies to focus on it. He formally founded the company in 2012, in a Prague basement.
The business that followed was simple. By mid-2015 it was selling the Original Prusa i3 kit for $690 from an office in Prague. There was no sales team, and growth came from word of mouth.
The key detail from that period is about people, not machines. In May 2016, Prusa was selling about 500 printers a month with 37 staff, and 13 of those staff worked in customer service, offering live chat around the clock. More than a third of the company was answering questions, and the article credits kit quality and support for the rise in sales.
The growth years
The approach worked. By 2021 Prusa had about 500 staff and customers in over 160 countries, and Josef Prusa was named Czech Entrepreneur of the Year by EY. In 2020 the company also gave away about 250,000 face shields and published the plans, which earned a Czech Red Cross award.
It kept control of its supply chain as well. Today it makes 933 tonnes of its own filament a year, and runs about 800 printers in-house that printed more than 10 million plastic parts in 2025. Users have uploaded 1.2 million models to its Printables library. In 2022 it bought US distributor Printed Solid, now Prusa USA, and the US has grown to 35% of revenue.
The numbers
| Year | Revenue | Net profit | Source note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | About CZK 2.5 billion | About CZK 344 million | Profit worked out from the 2022 report |
| 2022 | CZK 2.626 billion | CZK 269 million | From the annual report, via Czech press |
| 2024 | CZK 3.65 billion | About CZK 47 million | Up CZK 750 million on 2023 revenue |
Do the sum and the problem appears. Net profit was about 10% of revenue in 2022 and about 1.3% in 2024. Revenue grew by around 40% over those two years, while net profit fell by more than four fifths. These figures come from the Czech business press, and one year's profit can reflect heavy investment, so do not read it as the whole picture. Still, the direction is clear.
What went wrong
Costs grew faster than sales
Co-owner Ondrej Prusa told staff in an internal message, reported by CzechCrunch, that costs were rising faster than income. The company had hired over 500 people in four years, and spent heavily on a factory in Hradec Králové and a new industrial line. The report also cited a weaker US dollar and delays to new products. Josef Prusa called the cuts a healthy process for a fast-growing tech company.
The cuts did not touch production, and the firm said it still could not meet demand for some models. By August 2026, Lupa reported headcount almost back at the earlier level.
A rival changed the market
Reports on the layoffs named strong competition from China's Bambu Lab as one of the causes. They give no detail on lost sales, so the size of that effect is not public.
Open source stopped protecting it
Prusa grew on openness, and its designs spread widely. In a March 2023 post, the company complained about near-identical clones, removed credits and closed products built on open code. It compared the risk to solar panels, where Chinese firms came to lead the market.
By July 2025 Josef Prusa went much further, saying open hardware in desktop printing was effectively dead. He cited four Chinese companies going from 40 patent applications in 2019 to 650 in 2022, and said he suspected many machines sold at cost. Those are his arguments, and Hackaday pushed back that the hacker community would carry on regardless. In December 2025 the company released its Core One frame files under its own licence the kind of protection he had said the company was working on.
The irony matters to anyone selling designs. Openness built the Prusa brand, then made its best ideas available to competitors with far lower prices.
What a small seller can copy
Most people reading this will never make a printer. But Prusa's problems appear in every small shop at a smaller size.
Copying is one example. If it can happen to a company of this size, it will happen to your best listing. Treat your brand, photos, service and speed as the real protection, and read our guide to licences on MakerWorld and Printables so your own shop stays clean.
Fixed costs are another. A printer is cheap, but a person, a unit and a monthly software bill all keep charging you in a slow month. Prusa's sales only slipped below target, and that still led to layoffs, because the cost base had been built for higher growth. Our print farm guide walks through this at small scale.
Service can also be a selling point when prices fall. Repair and spare parts work is one place where a fast local reply beats cheaper imports.
Three lessons to copy
- Treat support as part of the product. Prusa put 13 of 37 staff on customer service while it was growing. Answer every message within a day, write clear setup notes, and mention both on your listing.
- Track margin, not only revenue. Prusa's sales hit a record while net profit fell sharply. Each month, work out profit as a share of sales, using real costs, and act if it falls two months in a row.
- Add fixed costs only after the sales are steady. Prusa hired for a growth rate that did not arrive. Before you take on a unit or a helper, make sure three months of normal sales would still cover it.
Estimates are ours unless a source is linked. This guide was drafted with AI and reviewed before publishing.
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