3D Robotics announces VC funding, expansion plans!

Last week you may have seen the news that I'm going to be leaving Wired to lead 3D Robotics full time as CEO. Now I'm delighted to announce our other exciting news: last week we closed a $5+ million funding round with two premier firms, which will allow us to accelerate the growth of 3DR and expand into new markets.

The round was led by Jon Callaghan at True Ventures and Bryce Roberts of O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. Both of them will be joining the 3DR board. These are two of the most far-seeing VCs in the Valley, and both are part of the "hardware is the new software" trend, including investments in Fitbit, Makerbot, Littlebits and Instructables. And they share our vision of the power of open source, the Maker movement and personal robotics. Chris Michel, an investor and long-time entrepreneur (and former Naval Flight Officer) will also be joining as an investor and board member.

I'll be opening an office in the SF Bay Area ("3DR North"), which will focus on sales/marketing and community development. Our San Diego headquarters will continue to be the R&D and engineering center, while our Tijuana manufacturing is expanding to handle more and more of our production. My co-founder, Jordi Munoz, will take over the role of President, overseeing operations.

With me joining as CEO and the funding round, we'll be growing the company quickly. We're now at 40 people, but will be hiring more hardware and software engineers in San Diego and sales, marketing and community management people in the Bay Area (probably in the Berkeley/Emeryville area).

The aim of this ramp-up is simple: more cool stuff and a great customer and community experience. As part of this, we'll be launching a new 3D Robotics site/store, new product sites, manuals and tech support communities and a expanded customer support team. And of course a wave of exciting new products, focused on making drones and other aerial robotics technology easier, more powerful and cheaper than ever before.

This is going to be fun ;-)

26 members like this

Comment by Azam Shahani on November 5, 2012 at 11:48am: Awesome! Good luck Chris and team!

Comment by simonl on November 5, 2012 at 11:55am: Looking forward to the ride Chris. Congratulations.

Comment by Jeff Taylor on November 5, 2012 at 12:01pm: Congratulations to everyone at 3DR!

Developer Comment by John Arne Birkeland on November 5, 2012 at 12:05pm: Great stuff and good luck. Are we are looking at the drone version of Sparkfun in the making?

And regarding funding, I have one comment.

Coders want to code, not write documentation. Even more so when doing it for free.

I would suggest spending some money on the wiki's and documentation in general.

Comment by CharlieNoFun on November 5, 2012 at 12:06pm: Congrats!!! Can't wait to see whats coming!

Comment by Tsahi Mizrahi on November 5, 2012 at 12:16pm: Congrats you all

Moderator Comment by Gary Mortimer on November 5, 2012 at 12:23pm: Onward and upward

Comment by AS on November 5, 2012 at 12:40pm: Those are great news!

Congrats! :)

Comment by Kevin Bouchard on November 5, 2012 at 12:50pm: Any plans of going public? I'd buy stock :P

Comment by Kevin Brown on November 5, 2012 at 12:52pm: glad to hear the great news, it would be very nice if there was opportunity/mechanism for the community to be able to invest also.

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