More electric boat investments – Arc Boats $30M Series ‘A’ round
The electric boat investments world keeps heating up. One day after GM announced that it will be investing $150M in electric boating company Pure Watercraft, Arc Boats has announced a successful $30M Series A fundraising round.
This comes in the wake of (pun intended) high profile investments in the all-electric wakeboarding towboat by Will Smith, Kevin Durant and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs. Arc’s development team includes a number of experts from Space X, and some of the original investors in Arc were Silicon Valley titans Andreesen Horowitz and Lowercarbon Capital, who invested early in companies like twitter, Uber and Instagram.
You can read all about Arc Boats in this Plugboats article that includes a podcast with Mitch Lee, Co-Founder of Arc.
According to Investopedia, in investment parlance, Series A means
Once a business has developed a track record (an established user base, consistent revenue figures, or some other key performance indicator), that company may opt for Series A funding in order to further optimize its user base and product offerings. Opportunities may be taken to scale the product across different markets. In this round, it’s important to have a plan for developing a business model that will generate long-term profit.
In Series A funding, investors are not just looking for great ideas. Rather, they are looking for companies with great ideas as well as a strong strategy for turning that idea into a successful, money-making business.
Announcement from Arc of latest electric boat investment
From co-founder Mitch Lee on the Arc Boats website today:
“We founded Arc with the goal of electrifying the watercraft industry. Over the past nine months, we raised a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, brought together an unparalleled team of rocket engineers and boat enthusiasts, built and tested one of the world’s most powerful electric boats from scratch, attracted an all-star lineup of strategic investors, and kicked off production of our limited-edition Arc One.
Today, we’re excited to announce our latest milestone: a $30M Series A fundraising round led by Greg Reichow from Eclipse Ventures, with participation from all of our existing investors — Andreessen Horowitz, Lowercarbon Capital, and Abstract Ventures. Greg will also join Arc’s board.
Prior to joining Eclipse, Greg led much of Tesla’s early manufacturing, supply chain, and automation efforts. His wealth of experience making the difficult transition from R&D to full-scale production will help Arc accelerate its production ramp over the coming year. We’re thrilled to welcome him and the rest of the team at Eclipse aboard.
Raising a Series A so quickly after founding the company is a testament to the strength of Arc’s team and the momentum we’ve built towards electrifying the marine industry. But anyone can lay out an ambitious roadmap; the hard part is executing on it. In the near term, that means staying focused on delivering the Arc One. We’ll have more to share about where we’re heading from there soon, but suffice to say that we have no intention of slowing down.”
