According to a recent release, Actility, a Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) provider for the Internet of Things (IoT), has successfully completed its Series D funding round, raising $75 million to enhance its portfolio of IoT solutions. The company’s expansion will focus on enabling Industrial IoT (IIoT) solutions in key verticals, including: logistics and supply chain, smart buildings, and energy and utilities.
In the first closing, Creadev, Bosch and Inmarsat were among the new investors, alongside existing investors like Idinvest, Bpifrance, Ginko Ventures, KPN (News - Alert), Orange Digital Ventures, Swisscom and Foxconn. A second closing later this month reportedly will see additional strategic investors joining the company in support of this capital raise, which was achieved by the company without involving banks.
“This fundraising will enable us to grow our IoT technology and ecosystem platform faster to meet the needs of service providers, solution providers and enterprises in large industry verticals, for example rolling out our disruptive global location and tracking service more quickly,” said Mike Mulica (News - Alert), CEO, Actility. “It will also allow us to accelerate our strategy for the US, and build strength in China. And last but by no means least, it will enable us to look at strategic acquisitions to broaden our technology portfolio and cement our leadership in LPWA.”
Since the 2015 Series C financing, Actility has worked to be a leader in global IoT solutions based on LoRaWAN, which is a dedicated radio network protocol for the IoT, co-invented by Actility. Today, the company’s ThingPark platform is powering national and large-scale LPWA rollouts worldwide. ThingPark has grown increasingly more industrial, supporting LoRaWAN, LTE-M and NB-IoT.
“Inmarsat (News - Alert) sees a great deal of potential in Actility, and its expertise in global IoT networks, based on LoRaWAN, makes it a natural fit for our investment,” said Paul Gudonis, President, Inmarsat Enterprise. “There are clear synergies between us, namely the ability to deliver innovative connectivity services to customers in remote locations, creating the potential for a global IoT network. To this end, we recently developed our LoRaWAN-based network in partnership with Actility to enable IoT to reach every corner of the globe. We have many more projects planned with Actility and we are excited to support the company’s rapid growth as it continues to make great strides in the IoT arena. This market is rapidly maturing and Actility, with its growing ecosystem of partners, is ideally positioned to take advantage of this for the benefit of businesses across a variety of industries.”