Open source hardware business booms: 13 companies making $1M+

Here's Limor "Adafruit" Friend and Make editor Phil Torrone presenting a quick Ignite talk on the growth of open-source hardware businesses, including the remarkable revelation that there are 13 companies turning over $1 million or more per year making hardware that anyone can copy and improve upon. Many are based on the Arduino, but the biggest (by an order of magnitude), SparkFun, is a kind of toolsmith that makes bits and pieces to plug into your other projects.

I saw Limor and Phil give this presentation earlier this month at FOO East in Cambridge Mass and haven't been able to to get it out of my head — so glad that someone got it on video!


13 Open Source Hardware Companies Making $1 Million or More (video)


PDF of the slides
(via /.)