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Arduino raises $22M Series B round

blog.arduino.cc

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Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#81

Post by martin_a »

marcosdumay wrote: post #55
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…

There's a huge difference between a company with a business model capable of taking over the world getting some investment, and one with a business model that is necessarily niche. What kind of market does Arduino expect to get into with that money? I can't see any.

> What kind of market does Arduino expect to get into with that money? I can't see any.

Maybe professional users like Raspberry Pi did (with the known consequences)? Getting out of that hobby/tinkerer niche with lots of counterfeits from China is probably something to strive for.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#82

Post by flkenosad »

marcosdumay wrote: post #55
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…

There's a huge difference between a company with a business model capable of taking over the world getting some investment, and one with a business model that is necessarily niche. What kind of market does Arduino expect to get into with that money? I can't see any.

Maybe the IoT market. Lots of demand for low-power hardware these days.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#83

Post by frollo »

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.

Given Arduino's origin and first history this is especially depressing. Good old Adriano is now well and buried.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#84

Post by Brusco_RF »

bombcar wrote: post #45
dbrgn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The words! They are buzzing!

Now if we could just somehow fit "web3" or "as a service" in that sentence

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#85

Post by crote »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #70
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt that they'll try, but I don't think they have the market position to pull that off anymore, not with ESP32 et al. ascendant. Or maybe I'm just out of touch with that side of the market, hard to tell.

Pretty sure the "Arduino ecosystem" is more than just the boards. It's also a bunch of libraries that provide a standard interface to a bunch of different hardware as well as tooling to build, flash, and monitor those libraries. While I don't love those libraries or tools, they do a half-decent job of papering over the shockingly painful esp-idf (the equivalent libraries for ESP32 boards) which I understand to be one…

The problem is that they aren't the only business in town anymore.

A lot of the hobbyist stuff is moving to MicroPython / CircuitPython, PlatformIO is eating the more hardcore market, and professionals will just stick to whatever RTOS & HAL they were already using.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#86

Post by jklinger410 »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #54
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 think you got it all wrong. VC funding makes things cool because they could afford to loose money and make product better. Enshittification starts when they stop receive VC funding like reddit or docker. Reddit was founded 18 years ago and for the first 10 years it was good because they don't have any pressure to make money.

Every company, once they stop receiving private investment, goes public and begins to enshiffy their products.

Accepting VC funding 99% of the time means that is the route they plan to go.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#87

Post by londons_explore »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #70
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt that they'll try, but I don't think they have the market position to pull that off anymore, not with ESP32 et al. ascendant. Or maybe I'm just out of touch with that side of the market, hard to tell.

Pretty sure the "Arduino ecosystem" is more than just the boards. It's also a bunch of libraries that provide a standard interface to a bunch of different hardware as well as tooling to build, flash, and monitor those libraries. While I don't love those libraries or tools, they do a half-decent job of papering over the shockingly painful esp-idf (the equivalent libraries for ESP32 boards) which I understand to be one…

I forsee they'll make all those libraries and tools free for hobbyists - and maybe even 'less than free' - ie. "We'll send you a free dev board if you download the IDE!".

But if anyone tries to ship arduino code in a commercial product, they'll want royalties.

Or if any microcontroller maker wants to be supported by the ecosystem, they'll also want royalties.

And the royalty levels will be low because there are competing ecosystems of tools - but across such a huge market of embedded commercial electronics, I think they'll still do very well.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#88

Post by rjha »

wiremine wrote: post #23

I'm torn on this. I'm the CTO for a small software firm that does a lot if IoT. We've seen a number of startups build their prototypes using Arduino. Historically, there was no clear path to production. So, I think they're listening to some of their customers, and it is a clear opportunity for them. On the other hand, positioning yourself as a hobbyist platform, _and_ a "production-grade" platform is tricky. I really…

I have used both Arduino boards and our own hardware layer with AVR toolchains. The main USP of Arduino was a good community (people like and easy-to-follow instructions. The target market of Arduino did not want to look inside the IDE. That is the reason they scored over PIC etc. because they never even talked registers.

However, this easy was slapped together in the most unprofessional ways imaginable. IIRC, the SD card code used to have C++ virtual functions when a rock solid library from Chan was available. It was not easy built on a solid core that provided a gradual path to professional setups. It was do-it-and-happy-when-it-works kind of setup.

So I am not sure what direction can they take it in with funding. There is a limit on where easy can take you in the Embedded world, especially if you are looking for reliability and performance.

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#89

Post by whimsicalism »

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…

Where are you posting? That is the reference

Re: Arduino raises $22M Series B round

#90

Post by Dork1234 »

londons_explore wrote: post #62
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt that they'll try, but I don't think they have the market position to pull that off anymore, not with ESP32 et al. ascendant. Or maybe I'm just out of touch with that side of the market, hard to tell.

A lot of people still program ESP32's with the arduino IDE. And there are a good number of devices on the shelves of stores today which contain the arduino bootloader. It turns out the "point and click and get a working IoT product" tends to outcompete hiring a professional embedded coder to spend months to make something bespoke from scratch. My dumb fridge for example runs on top of the arduino bootloader on an atm…

If it isn't Arduino, then it will be MicroPython/CiruitPython and you won't even need a compiler.
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