Enterprise

FloLive connects with $47M to give its IoT and localized cellular technology a boost

Comment

illustration of finger pointing, with lines extending to multiple IOT devices; city skyline at night in the background
Image Credits: SavaSylan (opens in a new window) / Shutterstock (opens in a new window)

Carriers and enterprises that rely on cellular networks to connect workers, devices and machines are forever grappling with tricky unit economics: The promise of 5G was that these costs would come down, but the reality is that 5G networks, and device and machine support for them, are just not as ubiquitous as you might think, and that is before considering the cost and difficulty of managing across multiple countries via roaming agreements.

That is a clear gap in the market asking for tech to fix it. Today, a startup from London called FloLive — which has built a platform to improve how those end users can use existing and new cellular connectivity more effectively — is announcing $47 million in funding, underscoring what it says has been a wave of demand for its services.

FloLive’s pitch is enterprise end users ideally like to manage their cellular connectivity needs in a single contact, but that has largely meant roaming deals for their carrier suppliers, which make up about 98% of the connectivity, estimated Nir Shalom, FloLive’s CEO. The startup’s tech essentially does away with that by managing the provisioning of IoT and other cellular data services regardless of where the end points are located, or what they are. It works across some 220 countries covering any and all kinds of cellular networks as available in each of them.

“It can be water meters, or cars, or cameras or tracking devices,” said Shalom in an interview. “When you look at the market today the vast majority of solutions across more than one country is based on roaming services, or resellers.” But in addition to resellers often being expensive, the other disadvantage, he said, is that they’re more complex to deal with because of different data management regimes, such as GDPR, and “the performance is not as good. Roaming can have delays of 120 milliseconds or more, and companies for some services need much less.”

The funding, a Series C, is being co-led by Greenfield Partners and 83North, with Qualcomm Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, Saban Ventures and Hazelnut Partners participating.

The company previously had raised just over $41 million, primarily in the form of a $37 million round in 2021. That round included one tranche led by Intel, but notably the chip giant is no longer an investor in FloLive: Sharon said Intel Capital sold its stake about 20 months ago as part of a wider reassessment of its strategic priorities.

That is not the case for others. Alongside enterprises, FloLive’s customers and partners include both carriers and the many companies that provide services to them. In that vein, Qualcomm is working with FloLive to power its own IoT platform, which it was built in part to target the opportunity of providing services to address the vast fragmentation in the world of cellular services when looking for coverage across more than one location. 

It’s not the first example of FloLive working with, and getting funding from, a company that effectively is also somewhat competing with it. Ericsson was using some of FloLive’s tech in its own IoT business; then at the end of 2022 Ericsson announced it would be selling that business — which was loss-making — to Aeris.

The latter is a more direct competitor to FloLive, and Shalom confirmed that it’s no longer working with the former Ericsson business, nor with Aeris itself. (But to add one more layer of complexity here: Qualcomm also backs Aeris…) But in the fragmented world of telecoms technology, even this might spell opportunity.

“We are now seeing increasing interest from old Ericsson customers, and we’re now engaged with them,” Shalom quipped.

Other big partners for the company include the likes of cloud giants like AWS, which has been itself building out a business working increasingly with cellular carriers to provide both network management services, for example around 5G, and services for carriers to provide to their own enterprise customers. Shalom noted that there is a strong synergy between AWS and how FloLive is architected.

“We have deepened our relationship with AWS,” said Shalom. “We are all-cloud, and that allows them to use what we built. Cloud-native and cloud-centric is a part of what we do.”

The company is not disclosing its valuation but we understand that it’s flat on its last round. In 2021, it appears that figure was $108 million, according to Dealroom. That speaks to the challenges that still exist in the fundraising environment: You might be able to close your deals, but at what cost at the moment? And given that IoT remains a difficult business to eke out strong margins, that overall still means a lot of pressure on IoT businesses.

Still, investors willing to make a bet for a longer-term outcome are coming.

“We look for highly differentiated infrastructure technologies that can support a robust and modern technology stack on top of them,” said Avery Schwartz, partner at Greenfield Partners, in a statement. “After tracking the company and space for some time, floLIVE’s rapid growth adds to our conviction that the company has developed a unique solution that elegantly solves for the full matrix of pain points traditionally plaguing the IoT connectivity market. This solution lays the foundation for new and innovative services that will dramatically change the IoT space as we know it; we are delighted to join floLIVE’s promising journey.”

More TechCrunch

To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch has been publishing a series of interviews focused on remarkable women who’ve contributed to…

Women in AI: Rep. Dar’shun Kendrick wants to pass more AI legislation

We took the pulse of emerging fund managers about what it’s been like for them during these post-ZERP, venture-capital-winter years.

A reckoning is coming for emerging venture funds, and that, VCs say, is a good thing

It’s been a busy weekend for union organizing efforts at U.S. Apple stores, with the union at one store voting to authorize a strike, while workers at another store voted…

Workers at a Maryland Apple store authorize strike

Alora Baby is not just aiming to manufacture baby cribs in an environmentally friendly way but is attempting to overhaul the whole lifecycle of a product

Alora Baby aims to push baby gear away from the ‘landfill economy’

Bumble founder and executive chair Whitney Wolfe Herd raised eyebrows this week with her comments about how AI might change the dating experience. During an onstage interview, Bloomberg’s Emily Chang…

Go on, let bots date other bots

Welcome to Week in Review: TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the week’s biggest news. This week Apple unveiled new iPad models at its Let Loose event, including a new 13-inch display for…

Why Apple’s ‘Crush’ ad is so misguided

The U.K. Safety Institute, the U.K.’s recently established AI safety body, has released a toolset designed to “strengthen AI safety” by making it easier for industry, research organizations and academia…

U.K. agency releases tools to test AI model safety

AI startup Runway’s second annual AI Film Festival showcased movies that incorporated AI tech in some fashion, from backgrounds to animations.

At the AI Film Festival, humanity triumphed over tech

Rachel Coldicutt is the founder of Careful Industries, which researches the social impact technology has on society.

Women in AI: Rachel Coldicutt researches how technology impacts society

SAP Chief Sustainability Officer Sophia Mendelsohn wants to incentivize companies to be green because it’s profitable, not just because it’s right.

SAP’s chief sustainability officer isn’t interested in getting your company to do the right thing

Here’s what one insider said happened in the days leading up to the layoffs.

Tesla’s profitable Supercharger network is in limbo after Musk axed the entire team

StrictlyVC events deliver exclusive insider content from the Silicon Valley & Global VC scene while creating meaningful connections over cocktails and canapés with leading investors, entrepreneurs and executives. And TechCrunch…

Meesho, a leading e-commerce startup in India, has secured $275 million in a new funding round.

Meesho, an Indian social commerce platform with 150M transacting users, raises $275M

Some Indian government websites have allowed scammers to plant advertisements capable of redirecting visitors to online betting platforms. TechCrunch discovered around four dozen “gov.in” website links associated with Indian states,…

Scammers found planting online betting ads on Indian government websites

Around 550 employees across autonomous vehicle company Motional have been laid off, according to information taken from WARN notice filings and sources at the company.  Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported…

Motional cut about 550 employees, around 40%, in recent restructuring, sources say

The company is describing the event as “a chance to demo some ChatGPT and GPT-4 updates.”

OpenAI’s ChatGPT announcement: What we know so far

The deck included some redacted numbers, but there was still enough data to get a good picture.

Pitch Deck Teardown: Cloudsmith’s $15M Series A deck

Unlike ChatGPT, Claude did not become a new App Store hit.

Anthropic’s Claude sees tepid reception on iOS compared with ChatGPT’s debut

Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje‘s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Look,…

Startups Weekly: Trouble in EV land and Peloton is circling the drain

Scarcely five months after its founding, hard tech startup Layup Parts has landed a $9 million round of financing led by Founders Fund to transform composites manufacturing. Lux Capital and Haystack…

Founders Fund leads financing of composites startup Layup Parts

AI startup Anthropic is changing its policies to allow minors to use its generative AI systems — in certain circumstances, at least.  Announced in a post on the company’s official…

Anthropic now lets kids use its AI tech — within limits

Zeekr’s market hype is noteworthy and may indicate that investors see value in the high-quality, low-price offerings of Chinese automakers.

The buzziest EV IPO of the year is a Chinese automaker

Venture capital has been hit hard by souring macroeconomic conditions over the past few years and it’s not yet clear how the market downturn affected VC fund performance. But recent…

VC fund performance is down sharply — but it may have already hit its lowest point

The person who claims to have 49 million Dell customer records told TechCrunch that he brute-forced an online company portal and scraped customer data, including physical addresses, directly from Dell’s…

Threat actor says he scraped 49M Dell customer addresses before the company found out

The social network has announced an updated version of its app that lets you offer feedback about its algorithmic feed so you can better customize it.

Bluesky now lets you personalize main Discover feed using new controls

Microsoft will launch its own mobile game store in July, the company announced at the Bloomberg Technology Summit on Thursday. Xbox president Sarah Bond shared that the company plans to…

Microsoft is launching its mobile game store in July

Smart ring maker Oura is launching two new features focused on heart health, the company announced on Friday. The first claims to help users get an idea of their cardiovascular…

Oura launches two new heart health features

Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world…

This Week in AI: OpenAI considers allowing AI porn

Garena is quietly developing new India-themed games even though Free Fire, its biggest title, has still not made a comeback to the country.

Garena is quietly making India-themed games even as Free Fire’s relaunch remains doubtful

The U.S.’ NHTSA has opened a fourth investigation into the Fisker Ocean SUV, spurred by multiple claims of “inadvertent Automatic Emergency Braking.”

Fisker Ocean faces fourth federal safety probe