Munich Re/HSB Ventures, the venture capital arm of reinsurance firm Munich Re, led a $23m series B round for US-based internet-of-things (IoT) technology developer Relayr on Tuesday.
The round included VC firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Munich Venture Partners, both of which contributed to Relayr’s $11m series A round in November 2015, which was also backed by angel investors Josef Brunner and Tom Noonan.
Founded in Germany in 2013, Relayr has built an end-to-end middleware development platform for IoT products that includes a cloud platform, sensor kits and open source software development kits.
Munich Re/HSB Ventures made its investment in conjunction with a strategic partnership between Relayr and Munich Re subsidiary Hartford Steam Boiler (HSB) to develop a line of insurance products for investments in the IoT space.
Greg Barats, president and chief executive of HSB, said: “We are excited about collaborating with Relayr to combine insurance solutions with their IoT applications.
“HSB can help Relayr’s clients have confidence in their IoT investments by creating financial assurance that they will benefit, whether it involves increasing output, decreasing downtime, developing new revenue streams or reducing maintenance costs.”
Relayr had initially raised €250,000 (€1=$1.10 at current rate) from friends and family before closing a $2.3m seed round in 2014.