Israel-based internet-of-things (IoT) technology provider Wiliot added an amount reported by Globes to be $20m to its series B round on Tuesday, raising the money from investors including several corporates.
Venture investment platform Vintage Investment Partners led the round, which also featured beverage producer PepsiCo, Maersk Growth, Verizon Ventures and NTT Docomo Ventures – subsidiaries of shipping services provider Maersk and telecommunications firms Verizon and NTT, all fellow new investors.
Adhesive manufacturer Avery Dennison, cloud services provider Amazon Web Services, pharmaceutical firm Merck Group, mobile chipmaker Qualcomm and electronics producer Samsung returned to reinvest, the latter three through M Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures and Samsung Venture Investment respectively.
The other existing backers in the round were VC fund Grove Ventures and VC firms 83North and Norwest Venture Partners (NVP). The extra capital followed $30m in series B funding in January 2019 and Wiliot said it has now raised $70m since being founded in 2017.
Wiliot has created postage stamp-sized micro computers equipped with sensors and Bluetooth. The tags can be attached to products so they can be tracked through their lifetime and are powered by atmospheric radio energy meaning they do not require batteries.
Tal Tamir, Wiliot’s chief executive, said: “We have come a long way in the last year. Twelve months ago, conditions had to be perfect for the very first tags to work. Now we demonstrate Wiliot tags on bottles of wine, boxes of pizza and on envelopes.
“We are understanding how these tiny sensors embedded into products and packaging can change the way things are made, distributed, sold, used and recycled.
“By having a multiprocessor compute engine that powers itself, we have the security and flexibility to bring sensing and connectivity to things that previously couldn’t be connected to the internet of things. Privacy is key if you are to connect products to the internet and nothing short of a system of this kind can make sure only the right people can see this information.”
Amazon, Avery Dennison, Samsung Ventures, M Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, NVP, 83North and Grove Venture Partners supplied the initial $30m at a $120m post-money valuation.
NVP, 83North and Grove Ventures had provided $14m in series A funding for the company in early 2017, before M Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures added an amount likely to be between $5m and $6m in November the same year.
Image courtesy of Wiliot.
