New funding will help accelerate SIGFOX’s worldwide network rollout in Europe, Asia and the U.S. with the support of leading telecom operators.
French startup SIGFOX, which has quickly become one of the world’s premier provider of cell networks dedicated to the Internet of Things (IoT), announced that it has secured a record $115 million round of financing from strategic and financial investors in Europe, the U.S. and Asia.
Incorporated in 2009, SIGFOX has pioneered the Low-Power Wide-Area (LPWA) connectivity space and has become a reference player in IoT. The company builds low-energy, low-cost wireless networks to connect objects, such as electricity meters, smartwatches and appliances, providing the infrastructure that makes the IoT possible. And it couldn’t come at a better time either. In fact, analysts predict anywhere between 20 to 40 billion new smart devices to become embedded with sensors and microcontrollers to be Internet-enabled in the coming years.
“This funding will demonstrate that we can work with other partners to provide a network that will help us achieve our vision of a world with more connected devices,” Sigfox CEO Ludovic Le Moan told VentureBeat in a recent interview. “It was not easy when we started to raise this round because we didn’t know what the market would be like.”
According to Reuters, this is the third time since its inception that the startup has turned to investors to finance its growth, as it looks to rollout its network in 60 countries within the next five years. This strategic investment, which includes leading mobile network operators, clearly demonstrates how SIGFOX’s two-way low-throughput network complements existing high-bandwidth networks. The company sees a clear path towards unifying them into a single network, enabling always-efficient connectivity from both energy and throughput standpoints.
Following the deployment in France, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and soon the United States, SIGFOX will use this new equity round to accelerate its worldwide network rollout in Europe, Asia and the Americas with the support of international telecom operators like Telefonica, SK Telecom and NTT DOCOMO Ventures, as well as a leading financial sponsor and a number of industrial partners.
“This record $115 million round is a significant step in the development of our network’s coverage all around the world. The trust of our investors and the dynamism of SIGFOX’s team allow us to strengthen our position as the world leader in IoT communications,” explained Anne Lauvergeon, SIGFOX’s Chairman.
SIGFOX’s network technology is inexpensive, consumes little power and works over long distances. While they may be able to undercut mobile operators, who are counting on billions of connected objects to justify their investments in new cellular networks, the French startup tells the Wall Street Journal that it hopes to instead make telecommunications companies its allies.
“Since creating the LPWA space three years ago, SIGFOX has become the leading global solution for IoT connectivity,” added Le Moan. “This investment round recognizes those achievements and highlights the company’s potential to become the worldwide standard for small-message-based connectivity.”
This is certainly an exciting time for our friends at SIGFOX, who have been present in a number of our event booths over the last couple years. What’s more, the startup recently teamed with Atmel to name the ATA8520 device its first SIGFOX Ready-certified system-on-chip (SoC) solution. The combination of the new ATA8520 SoC and SIGFOX’s scalable, high-performance network offer industry-leading wireless performance and ultra-low power consumption in a cost-effective solution for wireless networking applications operating in the sub-GHz band.
Interested in learning more? Head over to the company’s official page here.
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