{"id":1702,"date":"2016-11-18T12:18:08","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T12:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/french-iot-startup-sigfox-confirms-e150m-series-e-at-e600m-valuation.html"},"modified":"2016-11-18T12:18:08","modified_gmt":"2016-11-18T12:18:08","slug":"french-iot-startup-sigfox-confirms-e150m-series-e-at-e600m-valuation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/french-iot-startup-sigfox-confirms-e150m-series-e-at-e600m-valuation.html","title":{"rendered":"French IoT startup Sigfox confirms \u20ac150M Series E at \u20ac600M valuation"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Sigfox<\/a>, the IoT company based out of France that is building a dedicated, global network to connect, monitor and control devices like smart home alarms, machinery, refrigerators and city streetlights,\u00a0today confirmed that has closed its latest round of funding, a Series E round of \u20ac150 million ($160 million). We broke the news\u00a0of this round<\/a>\u00a0in October, noting it was likely to be completed this month.<\/p>\n

The company is not disclosing its valuation but sources close to the company have said\u00a0it is in the region of \u20ac600 million ($637 million). This brings the total raised by Sigfox to just over $300 million, making it one of the better capitalised IoT startups on the market today.<\/p>\n

The company is adding a number of key investors with this latest funding: Salesforce Ventures, gas giant Total, entrepreneur and Parrot founder Henri Seydoux, Alto Invest, Swen CP and Tamer Group are investing in this Series E, along with existing investors Bpifrance, Elliott, Intel Capital, Air Liquide, Idinvest Partners and IXO.<\/p>\n

There are also still-unnamed investors involved that will bring the total to \u20ac150 million. (As for who they are, notably last month we reported that there was a strategic company out of China interested in Sigfox, so that is one contender.)<\/p>\n

Sigfox noted that the\u00a0round comprises a \u201cgreenshoe\u201d, meaning new strategic and financial partners can\u00a0join the share capital of Sigfox \u201cshortly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sigfox today says that it already has some 10 million devices registered on its network (versus 8 million a month ago), which now is operational in regions across 26 countries, covering\u00a01.35 million square kilometers and 358 million people. The funding will be used to expand that footprint further. The aim will be to cover 60 countries by 2018. Its rollout has included recent\u00a0100-city deployment in the U.S.<\/a>\u00a0It also sees a lot of opportunity in China and India.<\/p>\n

Currently, its\u00a0pricing starts at \u20ac1 per device per month up to \u20ac1 per device per year\u00a0(with a sliding scale based on volume).<\/p>\n

As we reported previously, while there are a number of IoT efforts based around building and connecting previously \u201cdumb\u201d devices to wireless networks, Sigfox is different in that it\u2019s trying to build a new network from the ground up for these objects, which sits separate from traditional wireless networks.<\/p>\n

This puts in competition potentially with carriers, who are also looking to IoT\u00a0to grow their data and enterprise businesses on their wireless networks, to offset declines from more traditional areas\u00a0like voice and fixed-line services.<\/p>\n

Carriers are also pretty active in the IoT space right now. Verizon (which owns TC by way of Aol) just this week announced that it\u2019s acquired yet another IoT-focused startup<\/a>, the smart cities-focused LQD WiFi<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Others that are hoping to get some traction in the world of IoT include large tech companies like Microsoft, leveraging its extensive installed base of Windows enterprise users, as well as\u00a0Cisco, which owns IoT management platform Jasper<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Apart from having an active network, Sigfox also has a strong moonshot game: it\u00a0believes that its flavor of IoT architecture could help eliminate data roaming, the cost and complexity of embedding silicon in connected\u00a0objects, and even the need for batteries in devices.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we met in 2010, we agreed that Sigfox could change the world by bringing the virtual and physical worlds together through a new paradigm based on the fundamental principles of astrophysics. Today, we have created the equivalent of the world\u2019s largest radio telescope for IoT. Our network is able to connect hundreds of billions of objects to the Internet through advanced radio techniques.\u201d said Ludovic Le Moan and Christophe Fourtet, co-founders of Sigfox, in a joint statement.<\/p>\n

While positioning itself as a rival to established carriers is an ambitious effort, it\u2019s one that has convinced a lot of investors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are happy to accompany the development of Sigfox because the technology it offers can be decisive to accelerate the deployment of the Internet of things. It is their advance acquired on the market in a short time and their capacity to accelerate the deployment of large-scale IoT solutions that motivated our investment\u201d, commented Patrick Pouyann\u00e9, chairman\u00a0and CEO\u00a0of Total in a statement. \u201cThis type of solution will improve the performance and operational safety of industrial activities, reduce operating costs, but also be used to serve customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe strongly believe that Sigfox has unlocked the IoT connectivity bottleneck and will bring billions of objects online in the near future. Its cost effective, easy to use, open platform solution is set to become the standard for low power object connectivity, bringing massive productivity gains to the corporate world and everyday benefits to end customers\u201d, said Franck Tuil, Elliott\u2019s Senior Portfolio Manager.<\/p>\n

While strategic investors like Total will give Sigfox a natural route to building its business in the energy sector, other strategic investors will help it build out its platform. The company plans to integrate with Salesforce\u2019s IoT Cloud, which will make it possible to sell solutions to future clients who are already working with the latter company to track, manage and analyse their IoT services.<\/p>\n

Sigfox said that\u00a0Lazard and Goldman Sachs acted as its financial advisors. Skadden was\u00a0legal advisor and Callisto was financial advisor to the management.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/3tnBmlZfw0M\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sigfox, the IoT company based out of France that is building a dedicated, global network to connect, monitor and control devices like smart home alarms, machinery, refrigerators and city streetlights,\u00a0today <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-1702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","tag-enterprise"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t