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Arduino raises $22M Series B round

blog.arduino.cc

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Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#71

Post by microtonal »

FredPret wrote: post #30
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

> super low cost ESPs from China Just checked aliexpress.com. You were not kidding - $1-2 per item!

They have been cheap for many years. There are so many great cheap options out there now with good support, ESP, ESP32, Raspberry Pi Pico, Pico W, WeAct Black Pill (STM32), various nRF2 boards.

At this point Arduino is just extremely overpriced and probably only still relevant because it's a household name and people want pin compatibility with the Uno and V5 tolerance for reasons.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#72

Post by candiddevmike »

hoherd wrote: post #64
evrimoztamur wrote: post #41

I find it very ironic (in a funny way) how the comments for funding rounds always have a sense of disappointment on Hacker News. We are all reluctantly expecting the worst when private equity and venture capital get involved despite being under the roof of a VC, in essence. I am surprised like another commenter that Arduino has to raise money, on the other hand. I wish it was a bit clearer on how this money ties into…

Not everybody here is "under the roof of a VC". I recently read a very inspiring article here about a successfully bootstrapped company. It's too bad more companies can't get off the ground without VC funding. I also think the cynicism hits extra hard when this happens with direct-to-consumer and educational companies. I don't think people care quite so much when a B2B company takes a round of funding because whateve…

The thing that sucks about bootstrapping is a VC-backed company can very easily kill your business--more money, neutral or negative margins, more connections, etc. They have an unfair advantage from the gate, and they will most likely be acquired before you do.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#73

Post by [deleted] »

blitzar wrote: post #51

Want to know more about how the funds will be put to good use? A major chunk will be invested to further strengthen the R&D team based in Turin, Italy, with the goal to grow enterprise application libraries and the Arduino Cloud for Business with more integrations and embedded AI features. Fools and their money are easily parted, even easier if you slap "Ai", "Enterprise" and "Cloud" in the pitch.

[deleted]

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#74

Post by baz00 »

dbrgn wrote: post #34
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.

To quote from the article: > After the first $32 million Series B financing received in 2022, “This investment will allow us to further fuel our transformational platform initiative for professional customers, lowering the barriers to entry in IoT and AI by providing a continuum from hardware to Cloud,” says Arduino’s CEO Fabio Violante.

What a load of complete steaming bollocks.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#75

Post by crote »

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.

"Supporting" and "inspiring" hobbyists isn't going to pay the bills, though.

Arduino opened up an ecosystem when they started back in 2005, but the world looks a lot different in 2023. First-party Arduinos are nothing special these days, and their competitors make way better products for far less money. Even the Arduino IDE has been leapfrogged by MicroPython / CircuitPython.

Hobbyists these days just aren't all that interested in Arduino anymore, and there is pretty much nothing paid which they can introduce which will change that.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#76

Post by evrimoztamur »

rwmj wrote: post #46
evrimoztamur wrote: post #41

I find it very ironic (in a funny way) how the comments for funding rounds always have a sense of disappointment on Hacker News. We are all reluctantly expecting the worst when private equity and venture capital get involved despite being under the roof of a VC, in essence. I am surprised like another commenter that Arduino has to raise money, on the other hand. I wish it was a bit clearer on how this money ties into…

Why not be negative? They're not being given $22m for funsies. The backers will want a 10x return, so somehow Arduino must now raise their value to $220 million (actually $540 million, since they raised $54m in total). Where's that money coming from?

I understand your concerns, I am just pointing out the general dissatisfaction raised here and the expectation of enshittification being the default.

I would also like to point out that you are extrapolating a bit too hard. The claim that backers will want a 10x return is not necessarily correct, nor are the examples of 220/540m valid from a valuation perspective.

There are PE firms which do not seek such exorbitant returns. Without having eyes on Arduino's financials, it's hard to say that the growth expectations are as noted. As for the valuation, the implied post-money (i.e. after-investment) valuation depends on for what percentage of equity the 54m was offered for (where the implied post-money valuation would be 54m divided by the percentage, e.g. 108m with 54m paid for 50% of ordinary shares). Other factors such as preferences etc. impact this too.

I wouldn't be so eager to get mad, that's all. I am still hopeful for Arduino's future and hope that they put the capital to good use (instead of '10x'ing it).

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#77

Post by rollcat »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #33
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Personally I find the $OFFICIAL_IDE repulsive, and strongly prefer just writing the code in $MY_IDE, with a Makefile on the side. If you know what a Makefile is, then you're not Arduino's target market, but there are millions of people out there who want to turn a relay ON when some sensor gets too hot for some garage project, without first learning about Makefiles or registers. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item…

> If you know what a Makefile is, then you're not Arduino's target market I am arduino targey market and I know makefiles, I hate them with a passion. One must know his enemies better than he knows himself

In defense of the Makefiles, it's a known quality. They are indeed arcane and somewhat fragmented (BSD/GNU use different conventions; plan9 mk is a far cleaner solution), but you only need to learn them once, and things you've learned about make in the 80s is mostly still relevant in 2023. It's a dragon you only need to defeat once.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#78

Post by rollcat »

jes5199 wrote: post #40
rollcat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sometime…

honestly I want to be like you but I never figured out the toolchain to flash an ESP8266 over USB without the Arduino environment

The hardest part is probably figuring out the name of the character device, which is about as difficult as figuring out which pin is where on the board. But I guess these kinds of things don't come naturally to everyone, which is why Arduino is successful.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#79

Post by evrimoztamur »

renewiltord wrote: post #56
evrimoztamur wrote: post #41

I find it very ironic (in a funny way) how the comments for funding rounds always have a sense of disappointment on Hacker News. We are all reluctantly expecting the worst when private equity and venture capital get involved despite being under the roof of a VC, in essence. I am surprised like another commenter that Arduino has to raise money, on the other hand. I wish it was a bit clearer on how this money ties into…

Well, considering that many HN users seem to be under the impression that this is a loan ("$54 m of debt to service" etc.) I don't think there's much point in assigning any importance to the opinions.

With equity you just have different obligations, I responded to a rather cynical commenter above on my take. I agree, but it's not free either. Equity holders can exercise power in different manners, usually more hostile due to the decisive power they have.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#80

Post by CodesInChaos »

rwmj wrote: post #46
evrimoztamur wrote: post #41

I find it very ironic (in a funny way) how the comments for funding rounds always have a sense of disappointment on Hacker News. We are all reluctantly expecting the worst when private equity and venture capital get involved despite being under the roof of a VC, in essence. I am surprised like another commenter that Arduino has to raise money, on the other hand. I wish it was a bit clearer on how this money ties into…

Why not be negative? They're not being given $22m for funsies. The backers will want a 10x return, so somehow Arduino must now raise their value to $220 million (actually $540 million, since they raised $54m in total). Where's that money coming from?

They raised $22, but the valuation was probably closer to $100M (or even more if they raised $54 not $22). So for an investor to 10x their money, the exit needs to be for $1B or more.
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