Israeli IoT company Wiliot has received $200 million in a Series C funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
SoftBank joins existing investors that include 83North, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), Avery Dennison, Grove Ventures, M Ventures, the corporate VC of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, Maersk Growth, Norwest Venture Partners, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures LLC, Samsung Venture Investment Corp., Vintage Investment Partners, and Verizon Ventures. As part of the investment, Amit Lubovsky, Investor for SoftBank Investment Advisers, will join Wiliot’s board of directors.
Wiliot has created a platform that is built on Wiliot IoT Pixels and the Wiliot Cloud. Wiliot IoT Pixels are tiny low-cost, self-powered tags that attach to any product or packaging to sense a range of physical and environment data that is then fed into the Wiliot Cloud, where machine learning algorithms translate data into actionable insights for businesses across a range of industries. The Wiliot Cloud also ensures data remain secure, private, and authentic.
The company's technology means that products that were off-line during their manufacturing, shipping and consumption journeys are now online, which it says is changing the way products are made, distributed, sold, used, reused, and recycled.
"This omniscient view of the supply chain built on people’s usage allows a new paradigm called Demand Chain, which promises to slash the required capital that’s non-productively tied up in inventories. Products will be able to self-reorder based on usage, accelerating the adoption of the "subscription economy" as brands transform their business models. All this will provide consumers with increased convenience, fresher, safer food, less waste, lower medical costs and a lower environmental impact," Wiliot says.
"Wiliot has created a vision of the future of AI-enabled IoT, and we are delighted that SoftBank is supporting us in making this future a reality," said Wiliot CEO Tal Tamir. "IoT is a vision created around Things and our mission at Wiliot is to use cutting edge hardware, AI-based sensing and an innovative business model to implement a safer and more transparent world, a world in which all the things around us help consumers use them better and suppliers avoid waste."
"Wiliot is positioned to bring together the digital and physical" said Yanni Pipilis Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. "We have always believed that with IoT and AI, people will live better and healthier lives - where any food or medicine has the ability to understand if it’s safe to use and communicate seamlessly with people. We are pleased to play a part in helping Wiliot dramatically scale the ever-expanding application of IoT globally."
Wiliot was founded in 2017 by Tamir, Yaron Elboim, and Alon Yehevkely. It has offices in Caesarea, Tel Aviv, and San Diego. The company says that it will use the latest round of capital to grow its team and scale its channels for the forthcoming launch of its V2 product, which offers next-generation performance that will help accelerate its vision for a new IoT.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on July 27, 2021
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