China-based internet-of-things (IoT) technology developer Terminus Technologies raised RMB2bn ($283m) in a series C1 round, which featured three corporate investors, including e-commerce firm JD.com, property-focused conglomerate Wanda Group and voice recognition technology producer iFlytek. The round was led by asset manager China Everbright and backed by undisclosed additional investors.
Founded in 2015 and incubated by China Everbright, Terminus Technologies develops artificial intelligence-enabled industrial IoT products which can be used in public safety and urban management. The company targets governmental and private business customers alike.
There has been much attention in financial media poured over the IoT space in recent years and its wider applications – from smart factories to smart cities or homes. Corporate venture investors have also held this emerging technology well on their radars, as the GCV Analytics historical bar chart suggests. The number of corporate-backed deals in IoT reached a peak in 2015 with 174 rounds, and it has been going down in volume ever since. However, the total estimated dollars raised in these corporate-backed rounds grew significantly, nearly six times, from $675m in 2013 to $3.79bn by the end of 2018. In other words, it appears that valuations of emerging businesses in this realm have soared. Our data for corporate-backed deals by the beginning of August 2019 also corroborates this: for the first seven months we have tracked only 31 deals in the space but their total estimated worth was $2.57bn. The latest multimillion series C1 round raised by Terminus also attest to this upward valuation trend.
