Renesas announces investment in open-source company Arduino to access huge developer community

Renesas Electronics Corporation, a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, announced an investment in Arduino’s new round of Series B funding. The partnership with Arduino enables Renesas to make its broad range of products available for Arduino’s technology platforms used by its worldwide developer community.

Arduino was first developed as an easy-to-use tool for fast prototyping aimed at students without a background in electronics and programming. Arduino expanded to offer tools for education and professionals. Now, the company is focusing on empowering a new generation of professional engineers with enterprise scale applications. Arduino recently unveiled plans to expand its portfolio of hardware, software, connectivity, and developer tools for professionals and into the enterprise, broadening its offering beyond makers and students. The strategy is designed to deliver more of the speed, simplicity, and power inherent in Arduino’s innovative platform to the enterprise.

Arduino complements Renesas’ global strategy of reaching a broader range of customers by enabling designers around the world access to Arduino’s open-source platform. To help advance Arduino’s plans and vision of expanding into the enterprise, Renesas is investing $10 million into Arduino’s Series B round of $32 million. The funding will also provide Arduino with access to a new level of technology with Renesas’ industry-leading technology portfolio, including MCUs/MPUs, analog, power, and connectivity products. This investment is significant for Renesas as part of its strategy to grow its business in the mass market and reach new customers within Arduino’s community of 30 million developers worldwide.

“We are excited to be part of Arduino’s new strategy and provide them more options by giving access to Renesas’ extensive technology, tools, and customer base,” said Chris Allexandre, Senior Vice President, Head of Sales, and Corporate Digital Marketing, IoT and Infrastructure Business Unit at Renesas. “We look forward to working together to accelerate Arduino’s open-source technology and provide engineers in the enterprise easier access to it.”