Carriers and enterprises that rely on cellular networks to connect workers, devices, and machines are forever grappling with difficult unit economics: The promise of 5G was that these costs would fall, but the reality is that 5G networks, and the devices and machines supporting them, are not as ubiquitous as you might think, and that Consider the cost and difficulty of managing across multiple countries via roaming agreements.
This is a clear gap in the market that requires technology to fix. Today, a startup from London called Flowleaf — which has built a platform to improve how these end users use existing and new cellular connections more effectively — announces $47 million in funding, underscoring what it says is a wave of demand for its services.
FloLive’s pitch is that enterprise end users would ideally prefer to manage their cellular connectivity needs in one contact, but that largely means roaming deals for their carrier vendors, which make up about 98% of connectivity, estimates Nir Shalom, CEO For FloLive. The startup’s technology essentially gets rid of that by managing the provision of IoT and other cellular data services regardless of where or what the endpoints are. It works across some 220 countries Coverage of any and all types of cellular networks available in each.
“It could be water meters, cars, cameras or tracking devices,” Shalom said in an interview. “When you look at the market today, the vast majority of solutions across more than one country rely on roaming services or resellers.” But in addition to the vendors being often expensive, other disadvantages, he said, are that they are more complicated to work with due to different data management systems, such as GDPR, and “the performance is not as good. Roaming can have delays of up to 120 ms.” A second or more, and for some services companies need much less than that.
This Series C financing is co-led by Greenfield Partners and 83North, along with Qualcomm Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, Saban Ventures and Hazelnut Partners.
The company had previously raised just over $41 million, primarily in the form of a $37 million round in 2021. That round included one chip led by Intel, but it’s worth noting that the chip giant is no longer an investor in FloLive: Sharon Intel Capital sold its stake about 20 months ago as part of a broader reassessment of its strategic priorities.
This is not the case for others. Besides businesses, FloLive’s clients and partners include carriers and the many companies that provide services to them. In this context, Qualcomm is working with FloLive on Operating its own IoT platformwhich it built in part to target a service offering opportunity to address the massive fragmentation in the world of cellular services when seeking coverage across more than one location.
This is not the first example of FloLive working with and obtaining funding from a company that it competes with fairly effectively. Ericsson has been using some FloLive technologies in its IoT business; Then at the end of 2022 Ericsson announce The sale of this business – which was at a loss – would be to Aeris.
The latter is a direct competitor to FloLive, and Shalom confirmed that it no longer works with the former Ericsson, nor with Aeris itself. (But to add another layer of complexity here: Qualcomm also supports Aeris…) But in the fragmented world of communications technology, even this might present an opportunity.
“We are now seeing increased interest from Ericsson’s old customers, and we are now engaging with them,” Shalom joked.
Other big partners for the company include the likes of cloud giants like AWS, which itself is building a business that increasingly works with cellular carriers to provide network management services, for example around 5G, and services that carriers provide to telcos. Private institutional clients. Shalom noted that there is a strong synergy between AWS and how FloLive is designed.
“We have deepened our relationship with AWS,” Shalom said. “We’re completely cloud-based, and that allows them to use what we’ve built. Cloud native and cloud-centric are part of what we do.
The company does not disclose its valuation but we understand it is steady in its latest round. In 2021, that number appears to have reached $108 million, according to Deal room. This points to the challenges that still exist in the fundraising environment: You may be able to close your deals, but at what cost right now? Given that IoT is still a difficult business to generate strong profit margins, this overall still means a lot of pressure on IoT companies.
However, investors willing to bet on long-term results are coming.
“We are looking for very different infrastructure technologies that can support a powerful, modern technology stack on top of them,” Avery Schwartz, a partner at Greenfield Partners, said in a statement. “After tracking the company and the space for some time, we have discovered that floLIVE’s rapid growth adds to our belief that the company has developed a unique solution that elegantly solves the entire matrix of pain points that traditionally plague the IoT connectivity market. This solution lays the foundation for new and innovative services that will dramatically change IoT space as we know it; we are excited to join floLIVE’s promising journey.