Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Will Smith also voted.

Author | Wang Lei

Editor | on the continent

Here comes a brand new aquatic unicorn.

Arc Boats, an American electric ship start-up, has just delivered the limited edition electric ship Arc One and announced that it has received $70 million, or 510 million yuan, from the latest round B financing.

Arc is not long ago, the electric boat start-up was founded in early 2021, its biggest goal is to make everything on the water electric and intelligent, and the price of the first electric boat is not low, as high as 2.2 million.

Source: Arc Boats's strategy is similar to that of Tesla, the first product held high in the early stage, and then gradually infiltrated the market. This has something to do with the origin of the founder, whose co-founder worked at Boeing and the chief technology officer who worked as chief engineer at Musk's rocket company SpaceX.

Behind the investors is the Tesla senior management team, in a short period of two years, the total financing of Arc exceeded 100 million US dollars (RMB 730 million).

So, this is a story of Tesla on the water.

Investors are all celebrities at the beginning of 2021, Arc Boats was founded in California, USA. There were not many people when it was founded, but fortunately, it had great technology. Many of the engineers on the startup team are from SpaceX, and officials say their electric boat design is also inspired by aerospace.

In March 2022, Arc released a prefabricated version of its first product, the Arc One. The electric captain is about 7.3m and can carry up to 12 people, up to 500hp and a top speed of 40mph.

Source: of course, the most important thing about the Arc Boats is its oversized battery pack-220kWh, which is three times the size of the Model Y. it can last for 3-5 hours.

Unlike electric cars, heavy battery packs are not the disadvantage of electric ships. In general, the heavier the ship is, the more stable it is. So Mitch Lee, the founder of Arc, says the Arc One will be a luxury cruise ship. Its price is also as high as 300000 US dollars, equivalent to about 2.2 million yuan.

Luxury, electric, yacht, once combined, these keywords are not destined to be ordinary people's toys, of course, also attracted a large number of star investors.

Source: in the second month of its establishment, Arc attracted seed wheel investment from Andreessen Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley's top VC companies, and Andreessen Horowitz invested in a series of Silicon Valley technology giants such as Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter) and so on.

With the introduction of Andreessen Horowitz, Arc began to shine in the star circle.

In October 2021, Arc received another piece of money from American superstar will Smith's Dreamers VC, a Los Angeles-based fund that invests in companies that contribute to society.

In addition to will Smith, there are American basketball player Kevin Durant and "boast dad" Sean Coombs. With the blessing of this round of "true star" VC, Arc's seed wheel received $7 million.

Source: Arc Boats had only a dozen employees of Arc at that time.

A month later, Arc was followed by a round of financing led by Greg Reichow, a former executive of Tesla. During the period from April 2011 to July 2016, Greg Reichow worked in Tesla. Before leaving, Title was Tesla's vice president of production.

At that time, round A financing was $30 million, and Greg Reichow joined Arc's board.

At the end of September 2023, Arc received $70 million in round B financing, the largest since the company was founded.

Investors include Eclipse, Lowercarbon Capital and other investors. Lowercase Capital is also famous in the American venture capital circle. In 2015, Forbes rated Lowercase Capital as "the best seed portfolio in history" and Fortune magazine listed it as "one of the most successful venture capital funds in history".

Source: Arc Boats has been founded for two years, with a total financing of more than US $100 million. at present, Arc has only 80 employees.

With the money, the next step is to enter a bigger market. Arc plans to launch a larger-capacity electric boat designed for water-skiing, surfing and other water sports. At the same time, the team is also being expanded, and there are still 30 job openings in the company.

02, get Musk's "True Biography" count the Arc staff, there are many people have worked for Musk, even the founder is no exception.

The founders of Arc Boats are Ryan Cook and Mitch Lee, and Ryan Cook worked under Boss Ma's SpaceX for seven years.

Ryan Cook and Mitch Lee are college classmates who graduated from Northwestern University (Northwestern University). Both of them majored in mechanical engineering.

Because of their high awareness of sustainability and mechanics, the two did not go their separate ways after earning a mechanical engineering degree. After graduating in 2010, Lee joined Boeing (Boeing) the following year, yes, the same company that built the aircraft, as a pressure analyst.

Then, with the help of Lee, Cook joined Boeing as a Tool Design Engineer (tool design engineer), mainly responsible for customizing and designing parts for specific needs, and then the two worked together.

Until 2013, they both quit their jobs at Boeing, and after leaving Ryan Cook, they seamlessly switched to SpaceX, which was unknown at the time, and worked for more than seven years.

As a veteran employee of Space X, according to LinkedIn, Ryan Cook was the chief engineer for the first and second stages of the Falcon 9 rocket, as well as the chief engineer for the flaps and static aviation of the starship, and was responsible for the design of the starship oil tank.

Finally, in early 2021, he left Space X and founded what is now Arc Boats as CTO with an old friend Mitch Lee.

Source: Arc Boats and Mitch Lee has had a mediocre career since leaving Boeing, more like a serial entrepreneur, working as a technology developer at two companies, founded a company called Penny as a co-founder in 2015, was acquired by multinational wealth management firm Credit Karma in 2018, and has held a senior manager position at Credit Karma ever since.

After Ryan Cook left Space X, Mitch Lee also left that month and co-founded Arc Boats.

It is worth mentioning that Kevin Wollscheid, the chief manufacturing engineer of Arc, also worked at Space X for six years. In fact, many people in this startup company have worked at Space X, and even the hull design has several former Tesla automotive engineers.

Source: Arc Boats is not just a team, Arc Boats's corporate strategy also borrows a lot from Musk's model of running Tesla, such as entering the market with high-end ships, then paying for research and development with enough production, and then gradually entering the low-end market.

Just like Tesla's electric sports car Roadster, then Model S and Model X, then affordable models Model 3 and Model Y.

Ryan Cook has said, "We are moving into the high end of the market as fast as we can, but also into the lower end of the market-we use their [Tesla] tactics almost without a step."

03, electrification began to spread to the water 10 years ago, the electric ship market is still a blank, even in foreign countries, there are only a few enterprises involved in this field. While the electric vehicle market is growing exponentially, industries such as cruise ships and aircraft are obviously attracted by electrification.

Source: at the end of Arc Boats2022, investment agency InsightPartners released a report on the future growth of the electric boat market, saying that the electric boat market is expected to grow from $5.26 billion in 2022 to $11.35 billion in 2028, with a compound growth rate of 13.7% from 2022 to 2028.

So it is visible to the naked eye that electric boat startups begin to emerge one after another, and of course not only "Tesla on the water" Arc Boats is at the forefront.

Electric boat startup Zen Yachts, also founded in 2021, was favored by Ocean Zero, an investment company focused on sustainable water travel, founded by Stephen Petranek and Chris Anderson, who is the head of TED.

While the Zen Yachts's positioning is basically the same as that of the Arc, both focus on the high-end market, and their ZEN50 is a 51.5ft (15.7m) all-electric catamaran that can hold 12 passengers. It offers up to four bedrooms, each with its own full bathroom and a complete kitchen.

Unlike the Arc, the Zen Yachts is not only driven by motor batteries, but ZEN50 also has rooftop solar panels, which collect solar energy during the day and can drive continuously at a speed of five knots.

In addition, General Motors also invested in Pure Watercraft, an electric boat start-up.

Forza X1, also a start-up, also entered the capital market early, completing the IPO listing just over a year after its establishment. In August this year, when Forza X1 rang the bell on NASDAQ in the United States, its share price soared 179% on its first day.

Unlike Arc, the Forza X1 focuses on cost-effective electric yachts, and the development cycle is not as long as those luxury electric boats. The startup also received its first order from OneWater Marine, one of the largest leisure yacht retailers in the United States, which could generate about $12 million in revenue, according to Forza X1 estimates.

Not only abroad, domestic battery companies such as BYD and Ningde era have also begun to lay out the electric ship market and begin to provide their own battery solutions.

With more and more electric cars running on the road, the boat we sailed into the water will begin to be electrocuted.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: Chaodian Lab (ID:SuperEV-Lab), author: Wang Lei

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