The Australian government’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) has committed up to A$10m ($7.9m) to the A$20m series B round being raised by Australia-based connected device network services provider Thinxtra.
The round will value Thinxtra at A$66m, according to ZDNet, meaning CEFC would acquire a stake of about 15% in the company, should it invest the full amount. CEFC, Australia’s clean energy bank, is providing the capital through its Clean Energy Innovation Fund.
Thinxtra is deploying low-powered wide-area network technology created by France-based Sigfox, in the Asia Pacific region. The technology enables internet-of-things (IoT) devices to connect to the internet while using low amounts of energy.
The company intends to grow the Australian and New Zealand IoT networks to cover 95% of the countries’ population by the end of 2017, and is looking to connect about 17 million objects by the end of 2022.
Ian Learmonth, CEFC’s CEO, said: “Australia is a vast country with a scattered population. A large amount of energy is expended in physically monitoring millions of pallets, waste containers, gas canisters, farm gates, livestock and more. By providing a low-cost solution for tracking and monitoring these assets, we can save a huge amount of emissions.”
“Our finance for Thinxtra will help build essential support technology which is set to play a key role in transitioning the Australian economy to net zero emissions by the second half of the century.”
“We are talking about the potential to operate smarter cities, more energy efficient and liveable buildings, better monitoring of environmental assets, better health monitoring and more sustainable agricultural practices.”
The new funding will follow an A$11m series A round featuring quartz crystal manufacturer Rakon that Thinxtra closed in September 2016. Reports in February this year suggested the company had aimed to close the series B round by April.