Great post Matt. This is the kind of deep-dive I enjoy reading.

Here's my wild guess: they raised that money so they can do more ambitious things other than just version control, and not worry every few months about meeting payroll. I'm biased because I'm a participant in the design tooling ecosystem, and I think there is tons more to be done to improve the day-to-day life of designers before we'll run out of low hanging fruits. From the announcement post it seems Abstract intends to be a sort of a clearing center for all your design assets - for example someone can design a profile card in Sketch and someone else can assemble it inside a Profile page designed in XD.

However it is going to be challenging for them to remain completely out of creating their own design tool - it is a recurring itch that bothers people who've tried building even the humblest design-related tool, because you often have to work around limitations and quirks and wouldn't be able to help dream of a bluer sky.

They also might expand their enterprise sales team - expanding security and access controls was hinted at in the TechCrunch article - and that can only mean an enterprise play.

All I can say is, what a time to be around to witness the emergence of a new industry category! :)