- Berkeley, California-based Arris Composites announced it has raised $48.5 million in a Series B round of funding
Berkeley, California-based Arris Composites announced it has raised $48.5 million in a Series B round of funding. With this round of funding, Arris Composites is planning to expand its operations.
This round of funding was led by Taiwania Capital with participation from existing investor New Enterprise Associates (NEA).
Arris Composites is known for mass-producing carbon fiber composite parts. Some of its technologies have been used in the aerospace, automotive, and consumer products markets.
Arris Composites was founded by Ethan Escowitz, Riley Reese, and Erick Davidson in 2017. Including this round of funding, the company raised a total of $58.5 million.
Former Autodesk CEO Carl Bass is joining the Arris Composites board of directors as an independent board member. Bass has been involved at Arris since 2017 as an angel investor, advisor, and research collaborator while the company was incubated at his personal machine shop.
Arris Composites essentially enables the mass-production of high-strength and light-weight composite parts through its proprietary Additive Molding manufacturing technology. With this new process, advanced carbon fiber materials can be produced at the same speed as plastic molded products.
In order to unlock the potential for customers, Arris has developed unique tools for in-house design collaboration and application engineering teams. And now customers can design and produce previously impossible products that are highly integrated and stronger and lighter than metals.
Composites have a history of major reductions in fuel consumption due to the lightweight. But recyclability has been a problem.
Arris Composites utilizes a new generation of recyclable composites and has developed a novel method of designing products with the end in mind so the waste stream from today’s products becomes the feedstock for future products.
Key Quotes:
“When NEA introduced us to Taiwania Capital it was clear they had deep manufacturing expertise, as well as a track record scaling up new high-volume consumer electronics technologies. The alignment of our organizations was immediately evident and I knew they were an ideal partner to assist in scaling-up production for our consumer electronics customers.”
-Arris Composites CEO and founder Ethan Escowitz
“What made Arris Composites appealing to us is their ability to make consumer electronics products that were simply not possible with previous manufacturing technologies. Despite major advances in the electronics within portable devices, the structures have not changed very much, until Arris.”
-Huang Lee, Managing Partner at Taiwania Capital and Arris Composites Board Member
“Since we began working with Arris Composites in 2018, we’ve been impressed with the maturation of their manufacturing technology and the intense interest and enthusiasm we’ve seen from top brands in the consumer, automotive, aerospace and other industries in leveraging Arris’ manufacturing methods for next-gen, not-yet-released products. High-performance composites that can be mass-produced in new ways hold incredible promise for all kinds of products.”
-Greg Papadopoulos, Venture Partner at NEA and former Chief Technology Officer at Sun Microsystems
