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.<p>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 their strategy, are they planning to fund R&D, marketing, or manufacturing. What will Arduino look like in two years, and which stick are we getting enshittified?
I'm torn on this.<p>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.<p>On the other hand, positioning yourself as a hobbyist platform, _and_ a "production-grade" platform is tricky. I really like their entry-level boards for hobby-level things. I hope that continues.<p>Finally, a few thoughts:<p>1. If you dig into their code, their embedded software has struggled: the architecture is all over the place, the implementation is suspect in some areas, and testing has been weak. Hopefully they back port the new (hopefully improved) code to the hobby hardware.<p>1. As long as they don't require their cloud, I wish them well in that area. It's a really tough market.
Sounds to me like another nail in the coffin for Arduino as a useful tool for hobbyists.<p>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
Cue up the announcement two years from now about the "exciting" news about joining X megacorp, where nothing will change for users, except things will be better for some reason. Then cue the announcement two years after that where everything does indeed change for users for the worse. Then cue the inevitable open source fork...
Given it all started in 2005, I'm very surprised to see they're raising capital. I guess I incorrectly assumed they would have been very profitable by now with such a large user base & number of units shipped. 18 years is a long time.<p>The market has moved on significantly from when they first started (Raspberry Pi having launched things like the Pico etc), and there is a large amount of competition, so I do wonder if their growth aims are realistic.
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.
"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"<p>That entire sentence makes me want to jump off a bridge.
<i>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.</i><p>Fools and their money are easily parted, even easier if you slap "Ai", "Enterprise" and "Cloud" in the pitch.
"Finally, we will use the additional funds to accelerate go-to-market initiatives and customer support in selected areas."<p>Anytime I see the business speak 'accelerate go-to-market initiatives', the company is at its end-game. Any time a leader has to call that out, they are admitting they need to spend a substantial sum of money to solve a problem a small group of kids in a garage can do with some Red Bull.
Oh :-(<p>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.
Incidentally, and naively, I have to ask: Is there a business model that can promise customers a product that's immune to eventual usurpation? It's a hidden cost to build your world around a product only to see it turn into pay-to-play.<p>What is the antidote to this trend?
The business of VCs is to take risk. VCs _know_ that 8 out of 10 of their investment will return zero, zitch, nada. They just expect one of of 10 to make it even -- and another one to make it 20x.<p>So that doesn't mean that Arduino is on anything great: it just means it has been able to convince VCs that there's _some probability_ that they will make it big.<p>But the probability of doing something big is still very low...<p>( In fact a VC once told me that, 3 months after investing - i.e. a few board meetings max - he already knows if the company will succeed or not. And in 8 out of 10, he will just do the figuration until failure - at best, buy for cents on the dollar)
Good news. I think some ESP32 or RISC-V or similar player will soon push a competitor to Arduino IDE because I think the two things to onetize are the IDE ecosystem and the Arduino brand recognition. My prediction is they'll start by focusing more ion "enterprise Arduino" and later try to somehow monetize the IDE ecosystem (priority treatment for your arch if you pay the low number of X$/year).
Wow, I came to see the comments and saw mbanzi answering, and ohh, boy, everyone is hammering him. He genuinely tries to address concerns and questions, but there are many comments with plain intentions to create a flame. Good job on keeping a cool head and explaining the same thing repeatedly.<p>Congratulations also. Getting here and raising a significant amount of money is never easy.
Okay, so Arduino is probably done at this point and we'll just see its downfall.<p>Which leads me to the question: Is there an IDE/language that is as easy as that of the Arduino IDE? PlatformIO is often mentioned, but I don't speak C/C++ and am not really into learning it.
> Another consistent part is earmarked to help Arduino grow even more in the US, where we recently opened an office in Austin, TX and bolstered our presence in Chicago, IL.<p>Oh! I want to hear more about what they’re doing in Chicago since I’m in Chicago.
Arduino is in the lifecycle stage where they need to accelerate extraction. Unfortunate for some maybe, but as a hobbyist, the ESP hardware and software offerings are miles ahead anyway.