IoT Pioneer Wiliot Secures $200 Million Investment Round Led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2
With SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 backing, Wiliot will accelerate its mission to create a new era of IoT where intelligence and connectivity are brought to trillions of products that move through global supply chains – from crates, packaging, and pallets to clothes, medicine, and perishable goods.
SAN DIEGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Wiliot, the Sensing as a Service company and Internet of Things (IoT) technology leader whose self-powered, stamp-sized computer is changing the relationship between manufacturers and their products, announced today it received $200 million in a Series C funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2i (“SoftBank”).
Wiliot has created a platform that is built on Wiliot IoT Pixels and the Wiliot Cloud. Wiliot IoT Pixels are tiny low-cost, self-powered tags that attach to any product or packaging to sense a range of physical and environment data that is then fed into the Wiliot Cloud, where machine learning algorithms translate data into actionable insights for businesses across a range of industries. The Wiliot Cloud also ensures data remains secure, private, and authentic.
For decades, there has remained a massive gap as trillions of products travel billions of miles without any data being available as to their status, whereabouts, or situation. Lacking this information, global supply chains have been profoundly, and vulnerably, in the dark. Recognizing this, many leaders in consumer-packaged goods, pharmaceuticals, furniture, and apparel have been working with Wiliot to add their sensing capabilities, intelligence and connectivity.
Effectively, products that were off-line during their manufacturing, shipping and consumption journeys are now online, a reality that is changing the way products are made, distributed, sold, used, reused, and recycled.
Wiliot-enabled products and packaging can sense temperature, fill level, motion, location changes, humidity, and proximity. Wiliot IoT Pixels can be integrated into vaccine vials, food packaging, and more, bringing real-time transparency to the supply chain, and the ability for brands for the first time to understand inventory levels throughout their retail channels. They can even understand how their products are used in customers’ homes through a highly secure, privacy-protected platform.
This omniscient view of the supply chain built on people’s usage allows a new paradigm called Demand Chain, which promises to slash the required capital that’s non-productively tied up in inventories. Products will be able to self-reorder based on usage, accelerating the adoption of the “subscription economy” as brands transform their business models.
All this will provide consumers with increased convenience, fresher, safer food, less waste, lower medical costs and a lower environmental impact.
“Wiliot has created a vision of the future of AI-enabled IoT, and we are delighted that SoftBank is supporting us in making this future a reality,” said Tal Tamir, Wiliot’s CEO. “IoT is a vision created around Things and our mission at Wiliot is to use cutting edge hardware, AI-based sensing and an innovative business model to implement a safer and more transparent world, a world in which all the things around us help consumers use them better and suppliers avoid waste.”
“By inventing the first hyper-scalable, self-powered computer that uses AI to sense the world, Wiliot is positioned to bring together the digital and physical,” said Yanni Pipilis, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. “We have always believed that with IoT and AI, people will live better and healthier lives – where any food or medicine has the ability to understand if it’s safe to use and communicate seamlessly with people. We are pleased to play a part in helping Wiliot dramatically scale the ever-expanding application of IoT globally.”
SoftBank joins existing investors that include 83North, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), Avery Dennison, Grove Ventures, M Ventures, the corporate VC of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, Maersk Growth, Norwest Venture Partners, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures LLC, Samsung Venture Investment Corp., Vintage Investment Partners, and Verizon Ventures. As part of the investment, Amit Lubovsky, Investor for SoftBank Investment Advisers, will join Wiliot’s Board of Directors.
Wiliot will use the latest round of capital to grow its team and scale its channels for the forthcoming launch of its V2 product, which offers next-generation performance that will help accelerate its vision for a new IoT.
For more information and additional media assets go to www.wiliot.com/press.
About Wiliot
Wiliot is a Sensing as a Service company whose cloud platform connects the digital and physical worlds using its IoT Pixel tagging technology, computers the size of a postage stamp that power themselves in revolutionary ways. Our vision is to expand the Internet of things to include everyday products, adding intelligence to plastic crates, pharmaceuticals, packaging, clothes, and other products, connecting them to the internet, changing the way things are made, distributed, sold, used, reused, and recycled. wiliot.com
About 83North is a global venture capital firm. The fund invests across all stages, in exceptional entrepreneurs, whose focus is to build global category leading companies. For more information visit www.83north.com and follow us on Twitter @83NorthVC.
About Avery Dennison
Avery Dennison Corporation (NYSE: AVY) is a global materials science company specializing in the design and manufacture of a wide variety of labeling and functional materials. The company’s products, which are used in nearly every major industry, include pressure-sensitive materials for labels and graphic applications; tapes and other bonding solutions for industrial, medical, and retail applications; tags, labels and embellishments for apparel; and radio frequency identification (RFID) solutions serving retail apparel and other markets. Headquartered in Glendale, California, the company employs more than 32,000 employees in more than 50 countries. Reported sales in 2020 were $7.0 billion. Learn more at www.averydennison.com.
About Grove Ventures
Grove Ventures is an early-stage venture capital investment firm which places significant emphasis on deep technology and partners with exceptional Israeli entrepreneurs. With a quarter-billion dollars under management across two funds, Grove invests in leading startups developing hard-to-replicate solutions at the intersection of technology, science and applicable market needs. Its investment thesis is based on the premise that IoT, AI and Cloud Computing create a new set of investment opportunities in multiple sectors, including semiconductors, Industry 4.0, digital health and cloud infrastructure, among others. The fund’s core principles are putting people first, close cooperation and value-creation. Grove’s team, built of experienced investors, veteran entrepreneurs, and company builders, provides startups with the needed support to become great companies. For more information, visit: www.grovevc.com
About M Ventures
M Ventures is the strategic, corporate venture capital arm of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. Its mandate is to invest in innovative technologies and products with the potential to significantly impact the company’s core business areas. From its headquarters in Amsterdam and offices in the US and Israel, M Ventures invests globally in transformational ideas driven by great entrepreneurs. M Ventures takes an active role in its portfolio companies and teams up with entrepreneurs and co-investors to translate innovation towards commercial success. M Ventures has a significant focus on early stage investing and company creation including the creation of spin-offs to leverage the company’s science and technology base. For more information, visit www.m-ventures.com.
About Maersk Growth
Maersk Growth is the corporate venture arm of A.P. Moller – Maersk. Maersk Growth is investing and accelerating growth businesses to shape the future of trade, drive transformation in the logistics industry and support Maersk’s corporate vision of delivering seamless, end-to-end logistics services. For more information, please visit growth.maersk.com
About Norwest Venture Partners
Norwest is a leading growth equity and venture investment firm managing more than $7.5 billion in capital. Since our inception, we have invested in more than 600 companies. The firm invests in early to late stage companies across a wide range of sectors with a focus on consumer, enterprise, and healthcare. We offer a deep network of connections, operating experience, and a wide range of impactful services to help CEOs and founders advance on their journey. Norwest has offices in Palo Alto and San Francisco, with subsidiaries in India and Israel. For more information, please visit Norwest. Follow Norwest on Twitter @NorwestVP.
About Qualcomm Ventures
Qualcomm Ventures, acting through Qualcomm Ventures LLC or its affiliated entities, has been making strategic investments in technology companies that have the potential to dramatically transform our world since 2000. As a global investor, we look to help entrepreneurs build revolutionary businesses that reshape the world around us. For more information please visit: www.qualcommventures.com
About NTT DOCOMO Ventures
NTT DOCOMO Ventures, the NTT Group’s corporate venture capital firm, aims to accelerate innovation for creation of new services, disruptive technologies and innovative processes serving as a primary channel for startup companies and venture communities on behalf of the NTT Group, Japan’s leading ICT service provider. We proactively enhance cooperation with exceptional entrepreneurs on a worldwide scale by providing capital from our corporate venture funds and vast business development opportunities with the NTT Group companies. For more information please visit: http://www.nttdocomo-v.com/en/
About Verizon
Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, Nasdaq: VZ) was formed on June 30, 2000 and is one of the world’s leading providers of technology, communications, information and entertainment products and services. Headquartered in New York City and with a presence around the world, Verizon generated revenues of $128.3 billion in 2020. The company offers data, video and voice services and solutions on its award-winning networks and platforms, delivering on customers’ demand for mobility, reliable network connectivity, security and control.
About Vintage
Vintage Investment Partners is a global venture platform managing $2.4 billion across venture Fund of Funds, Secondary Funds and Growth-stage Co-investment Funds focused on venture in the U.S., Europe, Israel and Canada. The firm is invested in the world’s leading venture funds and growth stage tech startups striving to make a lasting impact on the world, and has exposure directly and indirectly to over 2,250 technology companies. Vintage leverages its unmatched network, and a database of over 10,000 companies to provide the Value-Added Services (VAS), a free-of-charge service, connecting venture-backed technology startups to corporations seeking innovation. VAS has a proven model that has so far helped generate over 200 POs and POCs globally exceeding $100 million in revenues for its startups. To learn more about Vintage visit: https://www.vintage-ip.com/about/; Social Media: LinkedIn; Twitter
i As of the date of this press release, SoftBank Group Corp. has made capital contributions to allow investments by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 (“SVF 2”) in certain portfolio companies. The information included herein is made for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy limited partnership interests in any fund, including SVF 2. SVF 2 has yet to have an external close, and any potential third-party investors shall receive additional information related to any SVF 2 investments prior to closing.
Contacts
Wiliot Media Contacts:
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+1 845.536.2200
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Asia-Pacific
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Israel
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