LUGANO, Switzerland—Sept. 6, 2023— Open source hardware company Arduino today announced the closing of an additional $22 million in funding for a total of $54 million in Series B financing. The expansion was co-led by CDP Venture Capital, Italy’s largest VC firm, and Anzu Partners. CDP Venture Capital invested through Large Ventures, its growth stage vehicle launched in 2023 to support the scaling up of Italian global category leaders, which kicks off its portfolio with this transaction. Joining them is semiconductor leader Arm.
The latest capital supplements the $32 million Series B financing – which was led by Robert Bosch Venture Capital (Bosch Ventures) and included Renesas Electronics – underscoring the company’s ongoing expansion and its pivotal role in democratizing electronics as a platform. Arduino is at the forefront of empowering a diverse community of citizen technologists. Leveraging a low-code/no-code approach, they provide innovative solutions in electronics, edge computing, and hardware. With their focus on AI and machine learning, Arduino seamlessly caters to hobbyists, students, and leading enterprises alike.
The additional funding allows Arduino to grow even more in the US, where it recently opened an office in Austin (Texas) and established a presence in Chicago (Illinois), while staying true to its European roots, with more than 130 people in Torino, Italy – half of which working on advanced R&D – and more than 30 people in Malmo, Sweden. A major chunk of the $22 million will be invested to further strengthen the R&D team based in Torino, with the goal to grow enterprise application libraries and the Arduino Cloud for Business with more integrations and Embedded AI features. Arduino will also use the funds to accelerate its go-to-market initiatives and customer support in selected high-potential geographies.
“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 HW to Cloud. We strongly believe that a top-notch R&D team and impeccable Go-to-Market are the only recipe for success for our demanding customers”, said Fabio Violante, Arduino’s CEO. “We greatly appreciate the support of CDP Venture Capital — as the first investor from our home country of Italy and one of the leading European ones — as well as the continued confidence from our previous investors.”
“Arduino came a long way from its humble beginning, becoming a powerful industrial tool used by cutting-edge organizations all over the world”, said Massimo Banzi, Arduino’s co-founder, chairman and CMO. “I’m honored by this investment which is a further confirmation that our original formula keeps applying to new domains”
The company has managed to chart a unique and successful course thanks to its unique global ecosystem, its growing presence in the enterprise and IoT markets and by adopting a platform-centric approach while strategically positioning itself as a focal point amid talent shortages, especially for technical proficiencies..
Arduino has been a ubiquitous name across electronics in the last decade, with more than 680,000 professional engineers identifying Arduino as one of their core skills on LinkedIn. The renewed emphasis on domestic manufacturing investments in many countries, including the United States, further bolsters this strategic alignment for tech-oriented jobs.
The company’s momentum remains strong. Earlier this year, Arduino successfully launched the next generation of the famous maker flagship UNO R4 board, with an Arm®-based 32-bit Renesas microcontroller for new levels of performance and capacity. In the EDU market, schools worldwide integrated Arduino solutions in combination with Arduino Cloud for Education in their curricula to facilitate understanding the impact of real-world problems, such as climate change. In the enterprise market, sales for Arduino PRO products have doubled each year since their introduction in 2020, also thanks to the recent launch of disruptive new products like the OPTA microPLC.
“As CDP Venture Capital we are proud to support the dimensional leap of Arduino, a unique global excellence in the democratization of open-source hardware and software,” said Mario Branciforti, Head of CDP Venture Capital SGR’s Large Ventures fund. “Arduino has built over time a vibrant community of students, engineers and makers accompanying their professional and business paths until entering industries and finding application in manufacturing. It’s been a great success story for Italy, proving our innovation and design leadership on an international scale. We are happy that Arduino kicks off Large Ventures’ portfolio, the first of many transactions that will aim to boost the growth of leading Italian tech companies, disrupting markets worldwide and making long-lasting impact”.
“The enterprise ecosystem is on the cusp of a seismic transformation, driven by the convergence of efficient AI and IoT at the edge. Arduino stands at the heart of this revolution, and their commitment to innovation promises to redefine the industry norms,” said Jimmy Kan, Partner, Anzu Partners. “Our decision to back Arduino’s vision was an intuitive one that resonates deeply with Anzu’s mission to foster innovation at the crossroads of diverse tech sectors.”
“For IoT to continue to scale and deliver increasing AI capability at the edge, developers need access to platforms that enable them to innovate quickly and easily,” said Paul Williamson, senior vice president and general manager, IoT Line of Business at Arm. “Arduino supports an extensive community of developers who play a crucial role in accelerating the deployment of new computing solutions for IoT applications, and we look forward to continuing to partner with them in growing and scaling this vibrant ecosystem.”
Both Branciforti and Kan will join Arduino’s board of directors.
