Thank you very much, Wyet. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating this morning and this afternoon. I want to preempt and tell you that I am talking to you today from Frankfurt which is the main -- one of the main annual event of Formnext, which is the industry additive manufacturing industry trade show. And it's the most successful one that Nano have ever seen. I've never seen so much interest in booths and in what we're doing, both in the existing Nano and the excitement around the 2 acquisitions some of which are already having people from other companies coming and visiting other company means other acquisition targets that we mentioned coming and visiting us.
So with this excitement and looking forward to this excitement translate into numbers.
I'll start by describing a little bit in the slide of the numbers mentioned that $15 million of revenue is the best third quarter ever and one of the best quarters ever we had. It's 22% over last year's same period. Gross margin was 48%, which is up from 44% and adjusted gross margin, which is without noncash expenses, is 51%, up from 48%. This is gentlemen and ladies, extremely important because the business model of all companies in our industry suffered from gross margins and therefore, from lack of profits. When we get to 55% gross margins, we start to show profits and substantial. And this is very, very exciting.
And no less exciting is the net cash burn. Gentleman and ladies, we turned around Nano Dimension from $16 million earning per quarter last year to $3 million net cash burn, and we are close to breakeven in cash burn and this is only Nano without the 2 acquisitions. Smaller [indiscernible] which we cut expenses by reducing headcount dramatically and still not harming the revenue and the growth which comes to show you that the direction to profitability, which we are committed to is well ahead.
Some business updates. Yes, we announced and closed to closing Desktop Metal acquisition and right after that Markforged acquisition, 2 of the main companies of this industry. In parallel, we have notable sales first time to applied materials, University of Dayton and a leading very well-known aerospace and defense company, which we can't mention its name, for obvious reasons. In parallel to all this, we are in front of our Annual General Meeting to be held in December 6. And yes, we are fighting descendant shareholders from -- in Toronto which is trying to dismantle the company. And we, as a Board, recommend to everybody to vote. The company is growing and will bring return much more than just taking it now selling it in pieces and trying to get pennies on the dollars. The vote cutoff for this general meeting is December 1.
The next slide will show you a little bit of the graphic presentation of the numbers. Slide #5 is showing that the revenue, the way it grew from last year, the gross margin growth and the reduction in net cash burn from the same period last year. The 3 new customers are not the only 3 new customers that we had this quarter, but we are just highlighting those for you because it means a lot for our growth of -- again, I'm talking about right now, original Nano before Desktop Metal and before Markforged, which is a whole new story, which I hope will be -- you'll hear about it in detail in the next conference calls.
So those are not included here.
If you would want to have a snapshot on Slide #7, you will see what we did with Nano over the years that you gave -- since you gave us the cash about 3.5 years ago and we were steward of the cash and promised you, we are not going to spend it until we get into large acquisitions.
So we did spend it on smaller acquisitions. And for about 2.5 years and as a result of that, got attacked by kind of activist or whatever you call them, shareholders that they were practically interested in the cash that the company has. But we got to the point where we did use the large cash that we have raised from you, and we use it for the good reason at the right prices. And we acquired 2 large companies and if you look how we move from the left side of the slide to the right side of the slide, from 1 technology and 1 type of machine in additive manufacturing and electronics into technologies with dozens of types of machines, more than 1,000 patents.
We have the largest amount of patents which is spread all over the industry and that by itself in the future may create a profit center for us.
We have technology nowadays that include inkjet, binder, DLP, [ FDM ] ceramic, composites, electronics, metal, metal casting, polymer and micropolymer.
We have only one technology that exists in this industry that we are still in look for, and we have plans how to reach it. And that's a technology that has to deal with another technology for metals. We do believe very strongly in the metal business.
The next slide, Slide #8 shows you these 2 large acquisitions, why we waited for so long. Look, ladies and gentlemen, since September '21, when we had the money and raised it, those companies that we now acquired were traded at between 15 to 35x their revenue. 15 to 35x revenue. And in this whole period, September '21 to May '22 through January '23, as the outliers from the different countries here try to attack us for not spending the cash and for trying to distribute the cash to themselves. We waited. We waited as those large transactions started to lose value and lost it steadily over 2 years until we get to the end of '24 and we bought them both at less than one time -- one less -- average onetime multiple, 1x sales multiple. And we believe we paid the right price and we bought them at the right time because if they were to proceed forward, they would be in trouble, which we believe they wouldn't be able to withstand by staying a stand-alone independent.
Now that we brought them together, all 3 of us together are creating an industry leader, which you see in the next Slide #9.
On the left, you see how we build ourselves. The $56 million is the old Nano, which is built from 6, 7 small acquisitions and 29% organic growth. I'm emphasizing the $56 million from '22 to '23 grew 29%, not from acquisitions, from organic growth. And if you read different numbers in the material that this foreign company from Canada, I think, is publishing it's all coming from somewhere that it's not the numbers of the company.
So we grew organically.
Then we added and we're adding $190 million, all numbers here are based on 2023 pro forma numbers. That's Desktop Metal. And we're adding $94 million of Markforged together to create a new $340 million business based on 2023. And I'm telling you right now, we are not going to emphasize the high revenue. We may even reduce the revenue on account of being profitable. If need be, the $340 million will be reduced to numbers where the gross margins will be higher and the profits will come and appear and at multiples of profits, we'll get the share up. In the right side of the slide, you see kind of analysis of 5, 6 companies in the industry public.
On the left, the small Voxeljet, Velo, Prodways, which are smaller companies that were public, 2 of them Voxeljet by now is not public anymore it's squeezed down to -- off NASDAQ.
Velo is on its way from $77 million of revenue per year to $3 million revenue per year and Prodways is going down from closer to $100 to less than what it shows here and traded by the way, in Paris Stock Exchange. In parallel, you see the 3 biggest companies in the industry on the right side, Stratasys, 3D Systems. And yes, us with $340 million. But look at the difference in the amount of cash that each one of us is, we will be $340 million with $470 million of cash on the balance sheet, and the other 2, you can see the numbers. That means we have the dry powder to turn the $340 million into a profitable and growing $340 million not into just revenue, revenue growing by acquisition or otherwise, but no profit