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In 2018, Matthias Wagner was leading a 100-person Burning Man camp called Hotel California.\u00a0<\/p>\n
8VC partner Francisco Gimenez remembers it well\u2014not just because it was the first time he met Wagner, but because of what Wagner had built.<\/p>\n
\u201cMatthias was the leader of the camp,\u201d said Gimenez. \u201cHe led the creation of a three-story hangout structure they\u2019d designed out of these interlocking Lincoln logs. It was open-sourced\u2014you could see the plans on GitHub. Matthias wasn\u2019t starting a company, he was still at Facebook. But you could tell the guy could run something incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
It would be one year before they crossed paths again, this time at a mutual friend\u2019s wedding. Wagner wasn\u2019t pitching anything\u2014but he\u2019d been watching the rise of design software firm Figma, and he couldn\u2019t believe no one had built something like it for the massive electronics market. Wagner has built all kinds of electronics, from sound systems to modular off-grid solar systems.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAround 2020, Figma had its first success, and you suddenly saw you could build a CAD tool in the browser,\u201d says Wagner, who\u2019s jocular and German. \u201cI realized: The software to make electronics hasn\u2019t improved in my lifetime. And clearly, today, we have better ideas about building software that\u2019s easier to use, more collaborative, more automated. Clearly, we can use machine learning, too. The supply chain now also exists in my Oakland backyard, I can make whatever I want. I don\u2019t need to be Lockheed Martin or Apple.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Gimenez was sold, writing the first check into Flux, as Wagner named his startup, in 2019. Now, after years of searching for product-market fit, Flux has seemingly found its path: The startup just passed one million sign-ups and has raised $37 million in capital, Fortune<\/em> has exclusively learned. This includes a January $27 million 8VC-led Series B, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Outsiders Fund. Outsiders Fund led the company\u2019s August $10 million Series A, and BCV co-led.\u00a0<\/p>\n Wagner emphasized that electronics are especially difficult and slow to design because the tooling is decades behind. And while the most professional, traditional engineers remain tied to legacy software, the global DIY electronics space is gigantic (some estimates suggest it could even be a $1 trillion market). And even the professionals are limited.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe number of electrical engineers is actually on the decline, with fewer and fewer people graduating,\u201d said Gimenez. \u201cThat being said, the amount of hardware in our lives is exploding dramatically\u2014every phone in front of me, the vending machines outside this room. It\u2019s a massive space that\u2019s impossible to diligence because it\u2019s all about how much hardware is being created.\u201d<\/p>\n Flux took about five years to get to revenue, a fact both Wagner and Gimenez are upfront about. And Wagner believes that Flux will ultimately be part of a change that\u2019s only just materializing: that we will be able to vibe code not only apps, but full-fledged devices.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re heading towards a complete flip of everything,\u201d Wagner told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cIf you can prompt an iPhone?class device into existence, why would anyone still go to Amazon and spend two hours looking for something? Everything changes if you can just describe something, make it, and if that thing is cheaper than buying something off the shelf\u2026 Our hope is that electronics will eventually be as democratized and empowering as software is today.\u201d<\/p>\n See you Monday,<\/p>\n Allie Garfinkle Submit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here.<\/p>\n Lily Lazarus curated the deals section of today\u2019s newsletter<\/em>.<\/em> Subscribe here.<\/p>\n – <\/span>Encord<\/b>, a London, England-based data infrastructure company for physical AI, raised $60 million in Series C funding. <\/span>Wellington Management <\/b>led the round and was joined by <\/span>Y Combinator<\/b>, <\/span>CRV<\/b>, <\/span>N47<\/b>, <\/span>Crane Venture Partners<\/b>, <\/span>Harpoon Ventures<\/b>,<\/span> Bright Pixel Capital<\/b>, and <\/span>Isomer Capital<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>Tamarind Bio<\/b>, a San Francisco-based no-code, AI-powered platform for drug discovery, raised $12 million in Series A funding. <\/span>Dimension Capital<\/b> led the round.<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>Elly<\/b>, a New York-based AI-native hiring platform, raised $8 million in seed funding. <\/span>Sorenson Capital<\/b> led the round, and was joined by<\/span> Atomic<\/b> and <\/span>Next Wave Capital<\/b>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>JetScale AI<\/b>, a Montreal, Quebec-based AI-powered platform for autonomous cloud infrastructure optimization, raised $5.4 million in seed funding. <\/span>The Business Development Bank of Canada<\/b> and <\/span>Diagram ClimateTech Fund<\/b> led the round, and were joined by <\/span>Telegraph Ventures<\/b>, <\/span>Fondaction<\/b>, <\/span>Mavrik<\/b>, <\/span>Cycle Momentum<\/b>, and <\/span>Spring Impact Capital<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>Summit Partners<\/b> invested $122 million in <\/span>Stay22<\/b>, a Montreal, Quebec\u2013based content monetization company.<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>Trive Capita<\/b>l acquired <\/span>Rolfson Oil<\/b>, an Addison, Texas-based fuel, oil, and lubricant distributor. Financial terms were not disclosed.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>Dubai Aerospace Enterprise<\/b> agreed to buy <\/span>Macquarie AirFinance Ltd.<\/b>, a San Francisco-based global aviation lessor, for $7 billion.<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>Morgan<\/b> Stanley<\/b> Capital<\/b> Partners<\/b> acquired <\/span>Security 101<\/b>, a West Palm Beach, Fla.-based security integration company for businesses, from <\/span>Gemspring<\/b> Capital<\/b>. Financial terms were not disclosed.<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span>Legato<\/b>, the SPAC for <\/span>Einride<\/b>, a Stockholm, Sweden-based electric vehicle startup, raised $113 million in financing. <\/span>EQT Ventures<\/b> participated and was joined by others.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Exclusive #Flux #backed #8VC #raises #million #vibe #code #electronics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2018, Matthias Wagner was l… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[13236,4335,4044,7918,459,14636,913,1569,1175,1570,1571,5831],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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