We’ve just raised an $18M Series A round to pull in the future of consumer electronics, with Spark Capital as our lead investor. We couldn’t have done it without you. The immense and immediate interest from all of you in our mission and in the Framework Laptop made it clear that we’re on the right track. This industry is long overdue for deeply personal products that are designed to last. This was as obvious to all of you as it was to us, and our partners at Spark have full belief in it too.
I know the team at Spark from Oculus where they had also led our Series A, and I’m excited to be working with them again. They both come from and have helped grow some of the strongest consumer brands out there. Kevin Thau who is joining our Board was one of the earliest hires at Twitter and a key leader on product and partnerships there. We also have Pathbreaker Ventures, Anorak Ventures, and Formic Ventures returning from our Seed round. All of these partners are working with us out of deep conviction in both our team and our mission.
We’re using this $18M to fund development of upcoming product categories and the long roadmap of new modules and geographic expansion for the Framework Laptop. Much like our products are built around longevity, we’re building this company for the long haul. We don’t need investor funding to keep the lights on; we instead use it to accelerate bringing upgradeability, customization, and repair to more of consumer electronics. We’re not ready to share what the next products are just yet, but this funding unlocks categories even more ambitious than our first one. We have a detailed plan in place for the next two years and napkin sketch ideas going out a couple of decades.
Our commitment is to always align incentives around longevity. Products that can be upgraded, customized, and repaired to last longer are better for consumers and less harmful to the environment, while also being the core of our business model. We want to maximize the number of people happily using their Framework hardware and minimize the amount of material sitting in a drawer or going to a landfill. The larger the active install base is on a Framework product, the healthier the Marketplace around it can be, supporting new modules, fostering a market for used parts and products, and enabling a broader range of users and use cases than we could ever handle on our own. We’re already seeing the early stages of this with the Expansion Card Developer Program, and we have a lot more planned for the Marketplace and the Framework Laptop ecosystem in 2022.
All of this of course requires an incredibly capable and creative team. The biggest benefit of our Series A fundraise is being able to continue to grow an amazing team to land our insanely ambitious mission and strategy. We’re hiring across every area of the company; especially key are our Product Marketing Manager, Hardware Engineering Manager, and Full Stack Developer roles. We would love for you to join us to build the products that people and the planet deserve.
We can’t wait to share what’s coming in 2022 and the years ahead.
Congratulations! It’s great seeing that level of support for the company.
Obv. core team can’t comment on potential decisions, but does anyone here with more of an industry background have a realistic idea of what $18M could potentially do, beyond what’s suggested in this blog post? After a certain point I think a lot of us read numbers like that and just think “really large number” instead of “enough to expand to x countries with existing product” or something more concrete.
Congratulations Framework team! This is a great milestone!
Are you able to comment on ownership of the company? Series A funding usually results in a significant shift on this front. In particular, I am concerned that a change in ownership may alter the long term direction and/or goals of the company.
Sounds like an important next step, and thanks for being as transparent as you can be about it.
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, the contrast between Framework and the vaporware scam known as Eve is night and day. Glad you have a solid plan for success, look forward to seeing it get turned into reality…
As far as I know, there have not been and don’t plan to. But, if that ever changes, we will be sure to let everyone know!
As for all of the comments under this post. I have been liking all of them but also want to say a thank you to all of you for your kind words and for being such an incredible community! It makes my role and others here at Framework feel incredibly fulfilled!
This is positive news. I hope that more adopt the platform and form factor and create a bigger market for framework’s products into the future. All of us who own a framework product are stakeholders in their success, and this is a exciting time. I hope to be keeping my original framework laptop for years to come - with upgrades of course!
I love the concept and I think I will enjoy the product but I am wondering if the i9 processor will be available soon. I have been holding off ordering until then so a date would be helpful. TIA
Framework probably won’t release a new chip series for at least a few months
They won’t announce it beforehand, because then almost everyone would wait, cutting off their cashflow
They didn’t release an i9 version in this generation and I don’t think they’ll do it in the next one either (provided it has Intel options). As some reviewers have noted, even the 1185G7 that tops the line in the current Frameworks suffers from a diminishing returns effect when compared to the other processor options, considering the much higher price point and the not so much better performance. You’d probably have to wait for a whole new chassis, as the current one just isn’t a workstation where an i9 might make sense.
Well to be fair, VCs ironically tend to want to give money to companies that don’t need it, instead of companies that need it, so if you want VC money and need it (many hardware companies do), you need to act on the outside like everything is going fantastic and don’t need it. If you need it and be actually true to yourself and act like you need it, you’ll unfortunately come off as desperate and nobody will give you money. Yeah, it’s kinda childish but it’s the way it works right now. Paul Graham has written plenty of essays about VC psychology. Most of the successful hardware companies of today once had to put on this show for VCs and act like they didn’t money, and that’s how they got money.
The reality is that shit is hitting the fan in every startup on the planet, nothing is going well on the inside, the game requires you to (a) be an actor and pretend everything is going great even when it isn’t AND (b) actually fix the shit that is going on inside. Those that do (a) AND (b) simultaneously and can continually juggle that while new, messier, smellier shit is always hitting the fan, win in the long run.
In any case, congrats to the team and look forward to continued upgrades, I do love my Framework laptop and will absolutely continue to be a customer in the future.
