Finland-based Wirepas, a company that wants to change enterprise IoT, has raised €10M in a fresh round of funding to accelerate the development of the ‘world’s first’ purpose-built non-cellular 5G technology.
The company announced the product earlier in May this year and claims to have seen an increased interest and demand from partners and customers to bring it to the market.
What does Wirepas offer?
Founded in 2010 by Teppo Hemiä and Mikko Kohvakka, Wirepas is an IoT company that aims to democratise enterprise IoT. The company says its purpose-built non-cellular 5G technology, operating on a free global 1.9 GHz spectrum, lets any enterprise set up and manage its own network autonomously without any operators anywhere in the world.
It also eliminates network infrastructure, equipment, middlemen, or subscriptions, thereby bringing down costs to a tenth of other market solutions.
This network built on new standards means any business, regardless of size, will be able to digitalise their business with reliable and affordable 5G connectivity. It will allow industries to run their own independent IoT systems and develop new services around their own expertise and business domain.
Through offices in Australia, Germany, Finland, France, India, South Korea, and the US, Wirepas serves customers across the world in the areas of smart tracking, smart building, smart manufacturing, and smart metering.
Wirepas’ current solution, Wirepas Massive, a large-scale mesh connectivity software for massive IoT, is already proving invaluable, scalable, reliable, and cost-efficient IoT solutions for over two hundred clients including Fujitsu, Prologis, Wurth, Schaeffler, Orange, and Fagerhult.
Here’s how it works
Investors and capital utilisaition
The round saw participation from Wirepas’ existing investors Karma and Tesi.
Speaking on the development, Wirepas’ CEO Teppo Hemia says, “Thanks to the great market interest and customers’ fast time to market targets, we have decided to accelerate the first non-cellular 5G product development. We knew our solution was special and the need has become even more apparent and urgent over the past several months.”
“This new injection of funds will help us continue to do what’s in our customers’ best interest, and that’s getting it done efficiently and as soon as possible. We target to have the commercial launch in 2022,” adds Hemia.
The funds will be used to strengthen Wirepas’ research and to further develop the Massive IoT technology – the deployments of this tech can include anywhere from hundreds to billions of connected devices. The primary goal for these applications is to transmit and consume small amounts of data from vast numbers of devices.
Besides, the funds will also help Wirepas to hire new talents with a focus on development, testing, and delivery, in order to bring the solution to market.
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