Moov attracts funding from Mark Cuban, NFX and more

With this additional investment, Moov's seed financing total at USD 4.4 million after an oversubscribed seed round last year, led by NFX. James Currier, General Partner at NFX, believes the global market for used semiconductor manufacturing equipment is vastly underestimated. "After working with Moov for two years, it's clear they are not only improving existing transactions, but also revealing latent supply and demand to actually expand their market. For pre-owned high tech manufacturing equipment, this is a $100B+ opportunity." The company is, via its marketplace, addressing this opportunity with technology that makes the end-to-end process of purchasing pre-owned semiconductor equipment significantly faster and more efficient. "We're humbled by the votes of confidence from these notable investors and entrepreneurs," says Steven Zhou, Co-Founder and CEO of Moov, in a press release. "Now, more than ever, the secondary equipment market provides a vital solution to enable U.S. and global manufacturers to quickly scale production and respond to growing chip shortages, while creating a liquidity channel when surplus capacity is no longer needed." Recent consumer trends like work from home and increased streaming as well as the sheer proliferation of smart devices across end markets has created a global chip shortage. Scaling up production is no simple matter — building and equipping a fabrication center costs billions of dollars and lead times on new equipment to manufacture chips are over a year. Meanwhile, end markets, like consumer electronics, cycle quickly, meaning entire production lines — hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars — may prove obsolete within the span of five years. "The semiconductor manufacturing industry is notoriously difficult for small and midsize companies to navigate due to capital requirements, rigid supply chains, and fast-cycling markets," says Mark Cuban. "While the global Covid pandemic created new challenges and subsequent opportunities for traditional chip manufacturers, we saw small and medium says businesses struggle to adapt to the new market demand. Marketplaces like Moov are changing this dynamic by creating new opportunities for SMBs to compete in a highly antiquated industry, in a cheaper, faster, and all around more efficient way." Nat Turner, Co-Founder and CEO of Flatiron Health and General Partner at Operator Partners adds that: "By building the infrastructure to amass and intelligently leverage data on the resale value of capital equipment, Moov is bringing transparency and reliability to the secondary semiconductor and broader manufacturing equipment markets."