Veniam today announced a $22 million Series B round led by Verizon Ventures with new investors Cisco Investments, Orange Digital Ventures, and Yamaha Motor Ventures joining the round. Existing investors True Ventures, Union Square Ventures and Cane Investments also participated. To date, Veniam has raised $27 million.
Veniam is a spin-off company of the Universities of Porto and Aveiro, founded by João Barros, Susana Sargento, Robin Chase and Roy Russell.
Its innovative and advanced networking technology connects infrastructures, people and moving things to each other, addressing the growing challenges of rapid urbanization.
João Barros, founder and CEO, enhances the innovation on Veniam’s technology when delivering the Internet of Moving Things:
The convergence of urban mobility systems, IoT wireless technologies, geo-referenced data, and soon the autonomous vehicle, is completely disrupting the way we transport people and goods (…) Veniam is proud to lead this convergence by expanding wireless coverage and data services for people, vehicles and moving things, thereby generating new applications, revenue streams and business models for telecom operators and the Industry 4.0.
The company that won the Best New Venture Award in the 2015 WBA Wi-Fi Industry Awards, has built the world’s largest network of connected vehicles, currently operating in Porto, Portugal, with 300,000 individual Wi-Fi users. Veniam aims at taking this technology even further.
SEE ALSO: Veniam’Works transforms more than 400 Buses into free Wi-Fi Hotspots (2014)
According to Ed Ruth, Manager at Verizon Ventures, Veniam is fostering the creation of the smart cities of the future:
Citywide mesh networks of connected vehicles and other moving things are a radically new concept and we are excited to support Veniam in enabling the smart cities of the future.
The funding will enable Veniam to expand its full-stack platform and deliver managed services over networks of connected vehicles to be deployed in urban fleets, ports, airports, factories and other transportation ecosystems around the world, including New York, Singapore, Barcelona, and London.
Veniam will also grow its teams in Silicon Valley, Porto and Singapore to continue developing its innovative hardware, software and cloud components, while delivering city-scale mesh networks of vehicles that expand wireless coverage and act as mobile sensors for a wide range of applications.