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Arduino raises $22M Series B round

blog.arduino.cc

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Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#11

Post by bananapub »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #4
tyingq wrote: post #2

Makes me curious what their revenue trends look like. From the outside, it feels like many people in the space are using the Arduino IDE, but with MCUs they bought from some other vendor.

Well, way back then, the Arduino IDE was precisely the game changer that made a lot of hobbyists and average people get into embedded systems without much friction or EE background, and not the board based on an Atmega MCU that anyone else could make. Many eons ago before the Arduino came out, I used to have EE labs in university based on the same Atmega chip but using a commercial IDE-compiler, and boy was that a gi…

obviously the Arduino IDE is great, but they sell it for $0 so that doesn't seem very directly relevant to how they 10x this big pile of money for their investors.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#12

Post by coldpie »

lexicality wrote: post #3

Sounds to me like another nail in the coffin for Arduino as a useful tool for hobbyists. That said I stopped buying Arduinos years ago and started buying super low cost ESPs from China and I think most other people did too so I guess it's not going to be a huge blow

Yeahhhhh. Taking on VC debt is a great way to kill your company. Guess this will buy them a few more years before they start turning the screws.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#13

Post by londons_explore »

londons_explore wrote: post #7

Oh :-( Every time a cool little company gets VC funding, you know that the free and opensource projects will dry up, and before long they'll be making premium high end products and suing anyone who tries to compete.

I predict they'll go after microcontroller manufacturers first. "Do you want your dev boards supported by the Arduino Ecosystem? Pay us 10% of revenue, and then we'll talk."

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#14

Post by candiddevmike »

darkstar999 wrote: post #10
lexicality wrote: post #3

Sounds to me like another nail in the coffin for Arduino as a useful tool for hobbyists. That said I stopped buying Arduinos years ago and started buying super low cost ESPs from China and I think most other people did too so I guess it's not going to be a huge blow

How is that a nail in the coffin?

How do you have a 100M business selling cheap, niche microcontrollers to hobbyists? They're starting to pursue a subscription model (Arduino Cloud), I'd expect them to shutter products that won't work with the subscription model and require everything else to use it. It's your standard enshitification play.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#15

Post by [deleted] »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #4
tyingq wrote: post #2

Makes me curious what their revenue trends look like. From the outside, it feels like many people in the space are using the Arduino IDE, but with MCUs they bought from some other vendor.

Well, way back then, the Arduino IDE was precisely the game changer that made a lot of hobbyists and average people get into embedded systems without much friction or EE background, and not the board based on an Atmega MCU that anyone else could make. Many eons ago before the Arduino came out, I used to have EE labs in university based on the same Atmega chip but using a commercial IDE-compiler, and boy was that a gi…

[deleted]

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#16

Post by sgt »

candiddevmike wrote: post #14
darkstar999 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that a nail in the coffin?

How do you have a 100M business selling cheap, niche microcontrollers to hobbyists? They're starting to pursue a subscription model (Arduino Cloud), I'd expect them to shutter products that won't work with the subscription model and require everything else to use it. It's your standard enshitification play.

By having 10M+ hobbyists that you support and inspire. That's how... easier said than done, but if they play their cards right, it is possible.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#17

Post by mholm »

sgt wrote: post #16
candiddevmike wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you have a 100M business selling cheap, niche microcontrollers to hobbyists? They're starting to pursue a subscription model (Arduino Cloud), I'd expect them to shutter products that won't work with the subscription model and require everything else to use it. It's your standard enshitification play.

By having 10M+ hobbyists that you support and inspire. That's how... easier said than done, but if they play their cards right, it is possible.

VCs, historically, don't understand this. Arduino did, but they've likely ceded some control by doing this fundraising. Maybe these VCs are different. I'm not counting on it.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#18

Post by rollcat »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #4
tyingq wrote: post #2

Makes me curious what their revenue trends look like. From the outside, it feels like many people in the space are using the Arduino IDE, but with MCUs they bought from some other vendor.

Well, way back then, the Arduino IDE was precisely the game changer that made a lot of hobbyists and average people get into embedded systems without much friction or EE background, and not the board based on an Atmega MCU that anyone else could make. Many eons ago before the Arduino came out, I used to have EE labs in university based on the same Atmega chip but using a commercial IDE-compiler, and boy was that a gi…

> Well, the Arduino IDE was precisely the game changer that made a lot of people get into embedded systems, and not the board based on an Atmega MCU that anyone else could make.

Interesting. Personally I find the $OFFICIAL_IDE repulsive, and strongly prefer just writing the code in $MY_IDE, with a Makefile on the side. OTOH I find the "branded" hardware attractive: it's a known quality in an ecosystem that I sometimes find complex and confusing, and I greatly appreciate the work they've put into making the whole process more approachable. Of course I have a couple clone boards at hand, but I will buy branded Arduino by default precisely because I instinctively associate the brand with less hassle.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#19

Post by [deleted] »

lexicality wrote: post #3

Sounds to me like another nail in the coffin for Arduino as a useful tool for hobbyists. That said I stopped buying Arduinos years ago and started buying super low cost ESPs from China and I think most other people did too so I guess it's not going to be a huge blow

[deleted]
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