Arduino Raises Another $22 Million, From Arm and Others, to Grow Its R&D, TinyML, Cloud, and More

Arduino has announced a major funding boost, closing a Series B round with an additional $22 million — money it says it will use to expand and support its Arduino Pro and Cloud platform offerings as it works to break into the large-scale Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) market.

“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 [Hardware] to Cloud," says Arduino chief executive officer Fabio Violante of the deal. "We strongly believe that a top-notch R&D team and impeccable Go-to-Market [offering] are the only recipe for success for our demanding customers."

The latest funding round brings the company's total Series B raise to an impressive $54 million, including Arm — whose processor IP powers the devices in Arduino's IIoT-focused Pro range. The money will be used, the company says, to support its newly-opened facilities in Austin and Chicago, and to strengthen its research and development team in Torino, Italy. This expanded team will focus, Arduino has said, on enterprise offerings — including the development of new application libraries and adding embedded artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to the business side of Arduino Cloud.

"Arduino came a long way from its humble beginning, becoming a powerful industrial tool used by cutting-edge organizations all over the world," says Massimo Banzi, Arduino co-founder, chair, and chief marketing officer. "I'm honored by this investment which is a further confirmation that our original formula keeps applying to new domains."

The investment from Arm comes as Arduino moves towards a closer relationship with the company, having not only based its Arduino Pro devices on Arm processor IP but having recently transitioned the Arduino UNO line from Microchip's AVR platform to Arm with the launch of the Arduino UNO R4 Minima and WiFi boards. "“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," says Arm's Paul Williamson in support of his company's investment in Arduino.

“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."

More information on what the company is planning to do with the new funds is available on the Arduino blog.