1NCE Raises $60 Million in New Funding

I am about to engage some mild best guesses in the history of 1NCE. In 2017, a year before the merger of T-Mobile USA (Deutsche Telekom) and Sprint (Softbank), Alexander Sator developed the concept 1NCE, the first flat rate IoT service. At the time, both T-Mobile and Sprint had some success in IoT, but both companies were primarily focused on the consumer market and IoT was not yielding a huge amount of revenue, compared to voice. However, Alexander Sator was familiar with IoT and understood that, once IoT was enabled, it was going to have a (relatively) continuous consistent rate of usage and not fluctuate like the consumer market. He also recognized that the Deutsche Telekom’s global network could easily support the volume of traffic IoT would generate.

Now comes the serious speculation. I think Alexander Sator, founder and co-EO of 1NCE, was well-respected in Germany for being a leader at Telit and Cinterion, as well as his serial entrepreneur background. As T-Mobile USA and Sprint started the talks on the consumer market, it was clear that Sator’s pitch for 1NCE focused on enterprise IoT made sense.

We are now back to the press release official timeline.

• 2017: 1NCE is founded with the aim of providing simplified and affordable connectivity solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT).
• 2018: The company begins selling its services, introducing the world's first IoT flat rate.
• Early growth: 1NCE experiences rapid growth, selling over one million SIM cards within a five-month period. The company expands its team and office spaces in Cologne and opens an engineering center in Riga, Latvia, in March 2019.
• Global expansion: 1NCE steadily increases its global footprint, offering connectivity in over 170 countries. 1NCE establishes offices in various locations worldwide, including Hamburg, London, Rome, Paris, Miami, Tokyo, Montevideo, São Paulo, Singapore, and Warsaw.
• Funding rounds: 1NCE has successfully raised funding through several rounds, including a $50 million Series C round in September 2021 and further undisclosed amounts in subsequent Series C rounds. Investors include SoftBank Group, Deutsche Telekom, and I Squared Capital.
• Strategic Partnerships: A key aspect of 1NCE's history is its strategic partnership with Deutsche Telekom AG, leveraging its network infrastructure and combining it with the agility of an IoT-focused company.
• Platform development: 1NCE has evolved beyond just connectivity, launching its own operating system, 1NCE OS, which provides a suite of tools to simplify the integration and management of IoT devices.
• Customer growth: 1NCE has garnered a significant customer base, with over 23,000 customers across various industries managing over 30 million connected devices globally by late 2024.
• Executive team expansion: To support its continued growth, 1NCE has expanded its executive team, bringing in experienced leaders in areas such as finance, strategy, human resources, marketing, and operations.
• Awards and recognition: 1NCE has received industry recognition, including the “Automotive Sensor Software Solution of the Year” award at the 2024 AutoTech Breakthrough Awards and Frost & Sullivan's 2024 Global Customer Value Leadership Award for its innovative IoT connectivity solutions.
• 2025 (AKA today): 1NCE, one of the fastest growing providers of IoT software and connectivity, announced the completion of a $60 million funding round. 1NCE’s list of investors to date now includes Deutsche Telekom, iSquared Capital, Kensington Capital Partners, SoftBank Corp., Vicenda Group, and Founder Alexander P. Sator. The company is one of the fastest growing companies in IoT and operates the world’s largest privately run IoT network in the cloud. 1NCE offers a software platform for connected products to more than 24,000 customers managing 30 million devices across 170+ countries.

Now, let’s look at how the money will be used.

Since 2017, 1NCE has raised a total of $160 M and, while it still known for it’s lifetime flat rate pricing model, this investment is intended “to broaden its product portfolio with a next-generation Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, add new AI tools, continue global expansion of operations, and further grow its presence in the United States.

The funding round supports 1NCE’s plan to continue its global expansion, which started in 2022 with a focus on the United States, APAC and LATAM. 1NCE now has team members working from 30 countries, with branches in 11 countries offering regional operations for sales, billing, distribution and warehousing. Coupled with a strong digital customer experience and support in 25 languages, 1NCE currently has a userbase from 50+ countries.

1NCE also plans to leverage the new funding to broaden its product portfolio for use cases across dozens of industry verticals. The company is preparing the launch of its next generation platform to further cement 1NCE as one of the preeminent destinations for IoT. For customers already using the 1NCE OS software for their AI projects, the company plans to launch new features soon. The company believes that AI growth will fuel adoption of IoT, with customers eager to ramp up data collection that strengthens their AI-driven engines.

The company also intends to use a portion of the funding round proceeds to further grow its presence in the United States. Expanding the U.S. market means increasing the workforce.

“The U.S. is our largest and fastest growing market, and we‘re expanding our American workforce to accelerate our momentum. 1NCE already delivers at an incredibly high quality with consistency and industry-defining endpoint availability of 99.97%. This funding further increases our ability to expand our competitive advantage across the world,” said Ivo Rook, Co-CEO of 1NCE.

"1NCE is a true global player in IoT with a variety of financial backers from the worlds of finance and telecom. Closing a strong round affirms that we are on the right track for continued success with our next generation SaaS platform,” added Sator.

In the past, I have had interesting conversations with the worker bees of 1NCE and I have always been impressed with their philosophy of keeping things simple for the enterprise customer, particularly on the issues of SIM management. If the company finds the path to do the same with its SaaS solution and vertical market modules, I am sure its popularity will grow.