Man, the last 2 years have been a wild ride. Bolt began as a somewhat crazy idea nearly two years ago to the day. Today we’re announcing we’ve closed a $32M Fund II and have opened a second facility in San Francisco. Wow.

We’ve made 18 investments in companies that we love, doing things we believe will change the world. Their teams are growing (and so is Bolt’s). They’re all building hardware and all fighting the good fight to bring complex connected products to market. Every step of the way is immensely challenging but equally rewarding.

As our portfolio has matured, we’ve found that hardware companies often need to raise (slightly) more capital at earlier stages than their more digital counterparts, so we’re increasing the maximum amount of capital we invest.

With this $32M fund, Bolt will invest up to $500k per startup.

We’re exceptionally lucky to have such a supportive LP base that allowed us to close our target fund size all at once. On the strategic investor side, return LPs Autodesk, Logitech, and Grishin Robotics all are significantly increasing their investments from the first fund. We’re also adding Cisco Investments as a strategic LP. Additionally, the fund is anchored by a number of well-known financial LPs including university endowments and fund-of-funds.

But not much else changes. We’re still laser-focused on hardware companies in the connected device space. We still equally love consumer products and unsexy industrial/enterprise/B2B companies. We still spend the vast majority of our time and resources helping companies build exceptional products and businesses. We still deploy a team of engineers and designers to work full-time with our portfolio companies.

Most of the images of our new space at Autodesk’s Pier 9 Workshop are pretty much engineering porn

Well, I guess one other thing does change: we’re opening a second facility on the west coast and will be located with Autodesk at their killer facility on Pier 9 on the San Francisco waterfront. All of our portfolio companies will have access to their workshop, which includes:

Cutting-edge digital fabrication lab

Woodworking + metalworking shops

3D printing lab (one the nicest in the world)

Laser cutting and high-end printing capabilities

Electronics workshop

A view of the Bay you can’t beat, from a pier, OVER THE WATER

We’re confident we can now fully support companies on both coasts. Our engineering team will work in concert with portfolio companies in either location.

Big thanks to all of our LPs and especially to Autodesk for inviting us to their phenomenal space at Pier 9. The entire Bolt team is excited for what 2015 has in store!