Moov - The New Way to Buy & Sell Semiconductor Equipment

Company & Team Introduction

Moov is building the world’s largest B2B marketplace for semiconductor equipment. The company was founded in 2018 by Steven Zhou and Max Yeung after identifying an enormous inefficiency in the industry. A massive amount of semiconductor manufacturing equipment goes unused due to massive enterprise companies like Samsung, Intel, and Qualcomm consistently upgrading to the latest, most powerful technologies every 3-5 years, while old equipment it is replacing would get stored away in a warehouse, never to be used again despite still having excellent performance and potentially decades of usable life left. Before starting Moov, Zhou was an early employee at Glassdoor and was Associate Director of Sales and Trading for the international semiconductor market for Capital Asset Exchange & Trading, LLC. At the same time, Yeung was a senior trader at the firm after graduating from UC Berkeley. The pair joined together to create their vision of a more efficient ecosystem, where large companies could recoup some of their initial investment while simultaneously lowering the barrier to accessing this equipment by offering lower-priced used options and reducing overall industry waste. The company has headquarters in the up-and-coming Semiconductor Hub of Tempe, Arizona and has scaled its team to ~89 employees.

Product Overview

Moov’s platform connects buyers and sellers of used semiconductor manufacturing equipment in over 65 different countries across the world. Far from just a transactional marketplace, Moov offers various other services to create a superior experience when buying or selling, including its logistics solution to help move all this massive manufacturing equipment around the world. Some of the value-add services Moov provides are industry-leading advanced live shipment tracking technology, 24/7 logistics team support, a dedicated logistics specialist for each shipment, and additional services if needed, including crating, de-installing, rigging, shipping, refurbishment, installation, payments, document and contract automations, a money-back guarantee and financial services such as financing and insurance. An impressive 95% of transactions on the marketplace choose to leverage Moov’s logistics services, alluding to its value.

Total Addressable Market

With the proliferation of chips in seemingly everything we use nowadays, the addressable market is massive. According to research from Future Market Insights, the total addressable market for global semiconductor manufacturing equipment was $105B in 2024, up from just $68B in 2019. The market is also experiencing healthy growth, with estimates of a 7.7% CAGR through 2034; the total addressable market could balloon to as large as $220B.

Business Model & The Numbers

Visibility into the company’s business model is limited. It is safe to assume Moov charges for the variety of add-on services it offers, including financing, insurance, shipping, crating, rigging, installation, etc., and set pricing for these services depends on a myriad of factors, including the model of equipment, its weight, location, etc. so uniform pricing is complex. Liability insurance is priced at 35c per $100 in transaction value. There is no indication of Moov taking a cut on transactions facilitated through the marketplace, but with an impressive $5.2B+ worth of equipment value listed on the platform, even a low take rate would capture massive value. The company achieved profitability in 2020 but may have shifted to a more investment and growth-focused strategy after its massive Series A in late 2021, affecting its profitability.

Traction

Moov has seen incredible adoption over the years, with over 15,900 companies using the marketplace to buy and sell, including massive enterprises such as Samsung, LG, and Microchip. In addition to the impressive number of companies using the platform, there are a healthy number of equipment listings, with over 29,700 currently listed for sale. Customers are also delighted with the Moov platform, as evidenced by their 99% ongoing customer satisfaction rating and 94% of customers saying they would or already have recommended Moov to a colleague.

Competitors

As with any massive market opportunity, Moov isn’t without its competition. Other players in the industry include brokers who take hefty fees in a less-than-transparent process and businesses such as bidservice.com, which buys used manufacturing equipment, refurbishes it, and resells it. Moov’s technology-focused market-based approach differentiates itself from other competitive threats through the combination of its value-added services, automations of tedious parts of the process, easy-to-use platform, extensive logistics network, existing network of buyers and sellers, etc. set them apart from competitors. Furthermore, thanks to its network effects, Moov offers the most extensive range of products from all equipment manufacturers, with nearly 30,000 active listings.

Buying used equipment also has advantages over purchasing OEM equipment, including, of course, pricing. Equipment can be acquired for pennies on the dollar compared to OEM pricing. These massive machines are also in high demand, and building new equipment is a time-consuming and laborious process that can take months to build, even before accounting for logistics. Purchasing already-built machines and leveraging Moov’s impressive logistics network can lead to massive reductions in lead times, with the average domestic delivery time being ~11 days, a logical solution for companies looking to acquire equipment on a time crunch.

Funding

Moov has raised a total of 4 rounds of funding to fuel its strong growth. The company first raised a small $400k pre-seed round from an undisclosed group of investors shortly after its founding in 2018. Moov later tapped the capital markets in 2020, raising a $2M oversubscribed seed round led by NFX with Decent Capital, Darco Capital, and Great Oaks Venture Capital among participants in the extension. The company further extended their seed funding in early 2021, raising an additional $2M strategic investment from NFX, Mark Cuban, and the founders of Flatiron Health (acq. by Roche for $1.95B) Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg. In late November 2021, Moov announced they had raised a massive $41M Series A round led by well-known crossover firm Tiger Global with participation from firms such as Atreides Management, Avenir Growth Capital, and Valor Equity Partners, in addition to existing investors.