littleBits Electronics Inc. has landed $44.2 million in new funding to further its growth. The additional funding round was led by DFJ Growth, with additional participation from new investors Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners, Grishin Robotics, and Wamda Capital, among others.
Prior investors that participated in this new funding round include Foundry Group, True Ventures, VegasTechFund, Two Sigma Ventures, and Khosla Ventures. littleBits will use this latest round of funding to invest in further STEM/STEAM education distribution, push global expansion, and develop new enterprise initiatives. The company will also expand retail availability in the coming quarter, as well as partner with Barnes & Noble to put littleBits in its retail stores across the U.S.
Barry Schuler of DFJ Growth, the former chairman and CEO of America Online Inc., will join the littleBits board. Jenny Lawton, former CEO of MakerBot, joins the leadership team as chief strategy officer, while former LEGO executives Paal Smith-Meyer and Christian Thor Larsen have joined the company’s strategic committee on global product and marketing expansion.
Joey Neal, previously at MakerBot, has joined as vice president of user experience and digital product, while Shirish Joshi has joined as vice president of supply chain.
As part of the company’s focus on international expansion, littleBits has recently rolled out a Global Chapters Program, an initiative to empower local communities to use its electronic building blocks to reinvent the world around them, in support of President Obama’s Educate to Innovate initiative announced at the 2015 White House Science Fair. Since launching at the end of March, there have already been more than 100 chapters opened in cities around the world.
