The Week in Review: IoT

Finance
Marvell Technology Group priced $500 million in senior notes due in 2023 and $500 million in senior notes due in 2028. The chip company will use net proceeds from the debt offering, cash on hand, and borrowings under a new term loan facility to fund the cash consideration and other amounts payable for Marvell’s proposed $6 billion acquisition of Cavium. The companies have expected to close the transaction, announced last November, by mid-2018.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based CrowdStrike, which specializes in what it calls cloud-delivered endpoint protection, received more than $200 million in Series E funding, valuing the company at exceeding $3 billion. The new round was led by General Atlantic, Accel, and Institutional Venture Partners. March Capital and CapitalG participated in the funding. CrowdStrike, founded in 2011, will use the money to promote its cloud-based Falcon platform.

Cylance of Irvine, Calif., raised $120 million in new funding, bringing its total private funding to more than $290 million. Funds managed by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities and other investors took part in the round. Cylance, which provides endpoint security through threat prevention involving artificial intelligence, will use the funds to increase market share, extend its product portfolio, and expand its worldwide footprint in Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia/Pacific region.

Cota Capital led a $29 million funding round for Bossa Nova Robotics, a supplier of inventory robots for retail applications, bringing the startup’s total private funding to $70 million. China Walden Ventures and LG Electronics also participated in the round. Bossa Nova will expand headcount, look at adding international offices, and increase R&D with the money. The startup makes its headquarters in San Francisco, with other offices in Mountain View, Calif., and Pittsburgh. Bossa Nova also announced a manufacturing partnership with Flex and counts Walmart among its customers.

Portland-based Rigado, a provider of commercial Internet of Things edge-as-a-service solutions, received $15 million in Series A funding led by Madrona Venture Group. Vanedge Capital, Rogue Ventures, FusionX Ventures, and the Oregon Venture Fund all participated. The startup, established in 2010, earlier raised $5.2 million in seed funding. Rigado plans to expand its engineering, sales, and deployment teams, while extending its global footprint. The company recently rolled out its Cascade edge-as-a-service offering based upon Microsoft Azure IoT; the Cascade IoT Gateway integrates with Azure IoT for smart building applications. Rigado has a dual headquarters office in Salem, Ore.

Crate.io of San Francisco raised $11 million in Series A funding led by Zetta Venture Partners and Deutsche Invest Equity, with participation by Chalfen Ventures, Momenta Partners, and Charlie Songhurst. Existing investors, such as Draper Esprit, Vito Ventures, and Solomon Hykes, were also involved in the round. Crate.io also debuted its Crate Machine Learning Platform, a hosted offering, enabling use of the company’s SQL-based database platform for working with IoT data. The company also has offices in Berlin, Germany; Dornbirn, Austria; and New York City.

London-based Panaseer received $10 million in Series A funding led by Evolution Equity Partners, bringing its total private funding to $15.6 million. Cisco Systems also participated in the round and was joined by Notion Capital, Albion Capital, Winton Ventures, and Paladin Capital Group, all return backers. The cybersecurity risk intelligence software startup offers the Panaseer Platform. Panaseer was founded in 2014.

Falkonry of Sunnyvale, Calif., raised $4.6 million in Series A funding led by Presidio Ventures, the early-stage venture capital arm of Sumitomo, bringing its total private funding to $10.9 million. Fortis Corp., Basis Set Ventures, Polaris Partners, Start Smart Labs, and Zetta Venture Partners also participated. The Falkonry LRS machine learning system has applications in the Industrial IoT.

Sclak of Milan, Italy, received €3 million (about $3.5 million) in private funding from Vertis and other investors. The startup has an IoT digital system to manage and control physical access to business, domestic, and industrial doors and gates, using an electric lock operated with a smartphone application.

Roambee of Santa Clara, Calif. raised $2 million from MDI Ventures, the venture capital arm of Telkom Indonesia, bringing its total private funding to almost $10 million. The startup provides enterprise asset tracking hardware, software, and sensor data. Roambee will use the funds to expand into the logistics market of Indonesia and Southeast Asia.

M&A
IBM acquired Oniqua Holdings, adding IoT capabilities for businesses maintaining vital assets. Oniqua specializes in maintenance repair operations inventory optimization products and services. The purchase is said to expand IBM’s Asset Optimization Practice. Denver-based Oniqua also has an office in Brisbane, Australia. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Finland’s F-Secure has agreed to acquire MWR InfoSecurity of the United Kingdom for £80 million (nearly $106 million) in cash, with up to £25 million (about $33 million) in future consideration for meeting business targets from mid-2018 through the end of 2019. Established in 2003, MWR has almost 400 employees in offices in the U.K., the U.S., South Africa, and Singapore. The transaction is expected to close next month.

July Systems of Burlingame, Calif., will be acquired by Cisco Systems, which is adding a location services platform with the purchase. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. The companies have partnered for several years. July Systems, which also has offices in Bangalore, India, will become part of Cisco’s Enterprise Networking Group.

Microsoft has agreed to acquire Bonsai of Berkeley, Calif., an artificial intelligence startup enabling people to develop machine-learning tools for industrial applications, without having a programming background. Microsoft invested in Bonsai through its M12 venture fund.

Conferences
The 55th annual Design Automation Conference takes place next week at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. The conference will have multiple sessions devoted to the IoT and related topics, such as blockchain technology.

Products/Services
Sprint is deploying a nationwide LTE-M network for IoT, using a virtualized IoT core separate from its existing cellular core. The new LTE-M network is scheduled to go live during the fourth quarter of this year. The mobile carrier is planning to merge with T-Mobile, which has a narrowband IoT network in the U.S.

National Instruments this week introduced the NI-RFmx measurement software for narrowband IoT and LTE-M (also known as eMTC) networks. The new tools are meant to complement the company’s existing radio-frequency test capabilities for Bluetooth, 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax, and 2G/3G/4G/5G standards, among other wireless protocols. NB-IoT and eMTC are used in machine-type communication applications, NI notes.

Aprotech selected the Monarch LTE-M/NB-IoT chip technology from Sequans Communications to develop IoT devices, starting with the South Korea market. The first product is an IoT kids and pets tracker for network operators in Asia.

NanoLock Security introduced a security and management platform for the IoT and connected devices ecosystem. The NanoLock technology is said to be agnostic in choices of CPUs and operating systems.

Cybersecurity
Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) and Senator James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) introduced a bill to establish a Federal Acquisition Security Council, with the aim of protecting the information technology supply chain for the government.

The VDOO cybersecurity firm reports it identified seven vulnerabilities found in Axis Communications security cameras. The security flaws were present in almost 400 Axis models, it was said. Axis issued software patches for each flaw.

Flashpoint issued a mid-year update to its annual threat intelligence report.

Market Research
International Data Corp. forecasts IoT spending will enjoy a compound annual growth rate of 13.6% from 2017 to 2022, reaching $1.2 trillion at the end of the forecast period. IDC’s Worldwide Semiannual Internet of Things Spending Guide can be found here.

Standards
The Industrial Internet Consortium published a white paper, Introduction to Edge Computing in IIoT, available here.