As Austin's reputation as a hub for semiconductor development grows, so does the number of businesses in the region facilitating the flow of equipment and materials needed to build those highly-sought-after chips.
Moov Technologies Inc., which connects buyers and sellers of pre-owned semiconductor manufacturing equipment, is one of the companies that sees a bright future here.
The startup is opening a second headquarters in downtown Austin. The 3,527-square-foot space is in the Omni Austin Hotel Downtown building at 701 Brazos St., which is also home to startup accelerator and coworking space Capital Factory. Moov worked with commercial real estate brokers at Cushman & Wakefield to secure the space.
Moov is based in Tempe, Arizona, relocating last year from San Francisco. Its expansion into Austin comes on the heels of a $41 million series A funding round led by Tiger Global in November.
The company's second headquarters is led by Raymond Mahon, Moov's director of customer success. Moov is looking to build up its sales team in Austin, with Partner Development Manager Sammy Mustafa leading that charge.
For now, Moov is operating with a hybrid work schedule; existing and future employees will have the option to work in the Austin office. It's not clear yet how many people that will be.
But co-founder and CEO Steven Zhou said he expects Moov to grow at a relatively fast pace in Austin. He declined to share revenue figures, but said the company has raised nearly $50 million in venture funding, is profitable and forecasts more than $100 million in revenue in 2022.
"We've been growing at in the multi-hundreds of percentages in revenue, year-over-year," he said. "And actually, quite the opposite of most companies, the bigger we get, the more our growth actually speeds up."
Some of that is due to the current global chip shortage, which has impacted products from tech gadgets to vehicles, and it's also growing organically as its network of buyers and sellers expands.
Moov, founded by Zhou and Managing Director Maxam Yeung in 2017, operates a managed marketplace for buyers and sellers, complete with photos and specifications like you might see for a house listing on Zillow. Buyers can make offers on the platform, but Moov also has representatives to help facilitate sales, especially on big-ticket items, which can reach into the millions of dollars for semiconductor equipment.
Zhou said Moov has signed a one-year sublease on its Austin office space. He expects that will accommodate around 25 full-time employees — or up to 40 with a hybrid schedule. He said the company will likely move into a new, more permanent space sometime next year. The company currently has about 40 employees total, and Zhou said he expects that to climb to 100 to 150 full-time employees this year.
The young company is used to relocation. Moov launched in San Francisco about four years ago. Just after it signed a lease for an office in downtown San Francisco, stay-at-home orders related to the Covid-19 pandemic arrived and employees had to work from home. They gave up the space and moved the HQ to Tempe in March 2021.
Zhou said Austin was an easy pick for an HQ2. Moov already had a few employees here, and it feels the city is very business-friendly.
"Austin is one of the largest and growing semiconductor hubs in the U.S., and knowing that we already have dozens of customers in Austin, it was a very obvious decision for us," he said.
Central Texas has been a hub for semiconductor development for decades. Chipmakers with an Austin presence include NXP, Infineon, Ambiq Micro, Vorago Technologies and others. Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. last year committed to invest $17 billion into a new, 6-million-square-foot chipmaking plant in Taylor, just northeast of Austin. That's in addition to a northeast Austin plant it has run for 25 years. On top of that, Micron Technology Inc. is said to be scouting Central Texas for a factory site.
The boom in chipmaking is driven by the world's increasing thirst for smart devices and products. That's been exasperated by global supply chain issues tied to the pandemic.
It's unclear how long the chip shortage and supply chain hiccups will continue, but Zhou said Moov will likely grow regardless.
"I know that a lot of experts out there are predicting that this may only last another year or two, but the way that we're thinking about it and seeing it is that chips are now in almost every single physical object in the world, and increasingly so," he said. "So the only way this really slows down is if the world stopped innovating, which we know is not going to happen. So we're incredibly bullish about the next several years."
Zhou said the company isn't currently planning to raise additional capital. He noted that Moov is positioned to take on other verticals such as solar equipment, photonics and printed circuit boards.
"It's unlimited blue ocean for us to really grow into," he said. "So all signs are pointing towards a potential public exit eventually."
For an Austin Business Journal list of headquarters relocations to the area in 2021, go here. And for a list of manufacturing facilities in the region, including many involved in semiconductor production, go here.
