Smart doorbell startup Ring raises $61.2M round led by KPCB, launches sleeker $250 Pro device
Internet of rings: Smart doorbell startup raises $61.2M, launches sleeker $250 Pro device — Smart doorbell startup Ring has raised a further $61.2 million in a series C round led …
Context & Ripple Effects
Ring's arc reads as one of the fastest escalations in consumer hardware: after Richard Branson put his name on the company's angel round in 2015, this $61.2M Series C led by KPCB arrives alongside a push upmarket with a sleeker $250 Pro doorbell — nearly double the price point of the original product.
The funding cadence only accelerates from here: less than a year later Ring closes a $109M Series D with DFJ, Goldman Sachs and Qualcomm while claiming sales in 100 countries, and by early 2018 Amazon buys the company outright for a reported $1B+ — making this Series C the last institutional round before the startup becomes a big-tech subsidiary.
First-order effects
- KPCB's lead gives Ring top-tier venture validation and capital to scale manufacturing and distribution of the $250 Pro, moving the brand from gadget novelty toward a premium home-security line.
- The Pro launch raises Ring's average selling price, letting it compete for buyers who would previously have defaulted to installed alarm systems rather than DIY doorbell cameras.
Second-order effects
- Strategic money arriving fast — Qualcomm and Goldman join the next round within months — signals that suppliers and financiers see the doorbell camera as infrastructure for a broader connected-home stack, not a one-SKU business.
- A premium-priced flagship forces adjacent players in DIY security to justify their own price points against Ring's expanding catalog, which under Amazon later stretches from a $199 Door View Cam to a full Pro-tier camera family.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, category-defining smart-home hardware startups stop going public and instead get absorbed by platform owners — Amazon's acquisition turns the doorbell into an entry point for an ecosystem of subscriptions, sensors, and neighborhood services rather than a standalone product business.
- The doorbell camera's evolution from crowdfunded curiosity to Amazon-owned franchise points toward home security consolidating around a few big-tech platforms that control both the device and the data it generates.
The trend: Consumer video doorbells are scaling from venture-backed gadgets into big-tech-owned home-security platforms, with each funding round compressing the timeline to acquisition.