Startups

Sigfox tech owner UnaBiz doubles its Series B funding to $50 million

Comment

Composite image of modern city network communication concept
Image Credits: Weiquan Lin (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

UnaBiz, the Massive Internet of Things service provider and owner of Sigfox’s technology, announced today it has raised another $25 million in Series B funding. This doubles the round’s total amount to $50 million, after the first tranche was announced in October 2021. UnaBiz, which is based in Singapore, has now raised $60 million in total.

The funding was led by SPARX Group, an investment company based in Tokyo, with participation from G K Goh Holdings and Optimal Investment, all returning investors. A UnaBiz representative told TechCrunch that the new capital will prepare UnaBiz for its next stage of growth so it can focus on driving commercial activities and delivery to customers in 2023, regardless of economic conditions.

UnaBiz acquired Sigfox’s tech in April after the French IoT startup filed for bankruptcy protection. The acquisition doubled UnaBiz’s office locations and tripled its headcount to more than 240 employees. The UnaBiz representative said it has closed down SigFox’s loss-making entities and brought in new executives, including a chief customer officer to focus on pipeline and revenue streams, a chief operating officer to oversee operations stability and cost optimization and a chief technology officer. Its goal is to consolidate its business more quickly.

UnaBiz plans to invest in four verticals (utilities, security, facilities management and supply chain and logistics) across Latin America, APAC and EMEA. The funding will also be used on research and development for the company’s 0G capabilities and expand its product portfolio to include more LPWAN and satellite tech.

In a statement about its investment in UnaBiz, SPARX Group president and CEO Shuhei Abe said, “As the technology owner of the most energy-efficient LPWAN technology available on the market, UnaBiz is in a prime position to champion the convergence of Massive IoT communication technologies (from 0G to 5G) to help enterprises achieve their digitalization and sustainability goals.”

1 napkin and 22 lines of code, or how NS1 rewrote the rules of internet infrastructure

More TechCrunch

eBay’s newest AI feature allows sellers to replace image backgrounds with AI-generated backdrops. The tool is now available for iOS users in the U.S., U.K., and Germany. It’ll gradually roll…

eBay debuts AI-powered background tool to enhance product images

If you’re anything like me, you’ve tried every to-do list app and productivity system, only to find yourself giving up sooner than later because sooner than later, managing your productivity…

Hoop uses AI to automatically manage your to-do list

Asana is using its work graph to train LLMs with the goal of creating AI assistants that work alongside human employees in company workflows.

Asana introduces ‘AI teammates’ designed to work alongside human employees

Taloflow, an early stage startup changing the way companies evaluate and select software, has raised $1.3M in a seed round.

Taloflow puts AI to work on software vendor selection to reduce cost and save time

The startup is hoping its durable filters can make metals refining and battery recycling more efficient, too.

SiTration uses silicon wafers to reclaim critical minerals from mining waste

Spun out of Bosch, Dive wants to change how manufacturers use computer simulations by both using modern mathematical approaches and cloud computing.

Dive goes cloud-native for its computational fluid dynamics simulation service

After growing 500% year-over-year in the past year, Understory is now launching a product focused on the renewable energy sector.

Insurance provider Understory gets into renewable energy following $15M Series A

Ashkenazi will start her new role at Google’s parent company on July 31, after 23 years at Eli Lilly.

Alphabet’s brings on Eli Lilly’s Anat Ashkenazi as CFO

Tobiko aims to reimagine how teams work with data by offering a dbt-compatible data transformation platform.

With $21.8M in funding, Tobiko aims to build a modern data platform

In 1816, French physician René Laennec invented an instrument that allowed doctors to listen to human hearts and lungs. That device — a stethoscope — eventually evolved from a simple…

Eko Health scores $41M to detect heart disease earlier and more accurately

The number of satellites on low Earth orbit is poised to explode over the coming years as more mega-constellations come online, and it will create new opportunities for bad actors…

DARPA and Slingshot build system to detect ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ adversary satellites

SAP sees WalkMe’s focus on automating contextual, in-app support as bringing value to its own enterprise customers.

SAP to acquire digital adoption platform WalkMe for $1.5B

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has emerged victorious in India’s 2024 general election, but with a smaller majority compared to 2019. According to post-election analysis by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan,…

Modi-led coalition’s election win signals policy continuity in India – but also spending cuts

Featured Article

A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the…

17 hours ago
A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs

Featured Article

What to expect from WWDC 2024: iOS 18, macOS 15 and so much AI

Apple is hoping to make WWDC 2024 memorable as it finally spells out its generative AI plans.

18 hours ago
What to expect from WWDC 2024: iOS 18, macOS 15 and so much AI

We just announced the breakout session winners last week. Now meet the roundtable sessions that really “rounded” out the competition for this year’s Disrupt 2024 audience choice program. With five…

The votes are in: Meet the Disrupt 2024 audience choice roundtable winners

The malicious attack appears to have involved malware transmitted through TikTok’s DMs.

TikTok acknowledges exploit targeting high-profile accounts

It’s unusual for three major AI providers to all be down at the same time, which could signal a broader infrastructure issues or internet-scale problem.

AI apocalypse? ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity all went down at the same time

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at LoanSnap’s woes, Nubank’s and Monzo’s positive milestones, a plethora of fintech fundraises and more! To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest…

A look at LoanSnap’s troubles and which neobanks are having a moment

Databricks, the analytics and AI giant, has acquired data management company Tabular for an undisclosed sum. (CNBC reports that Databricks paid over $1 billion.) According to Tabular co-founder Ryan Blue,…

Databricks acquires Tabular to build a common data lakehouse standard

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved…

ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot

The next few weeks could be pivotal for Worldcoin, the controversial eyeball-scanning crypto venture co-founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, whose operations remain almost entirely shuttered in the European Union following…

Worldcoin faces pivotal EU privacy decision within weeks

OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT has been down for several users across the globe for the last few hours.

OpenAI fixes the issue that caused ChatGPT outage for several hours

True Fit, the AI-powered size-and-fit personalization tool, has offered its size recommendation solution to thousands of retailers for nearly 20 years. Now, the company is venturing into the generative AI…

True Fit leverages generative AI to help online shoppers find clothes that fit

Audio streaming service TuneIn is teaming up with Discord to bring free live radio to the platform. This is TuneIn’s first collaboration with a social platform and one that is…

Discord and TuneIn partner to bring live radio to the social platform

The early victors in the AI gold rush are selling the picks and shovels needed to develop and apply artificial intelligence. Just take a look at data-labeling startup Scale AI…

Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang is coming to Disrupt 2024

Try to imagine the number of parts that go into making a rocket engine. Now imagine requesting and comparing quotes for each of those parts, getting approvals to purchase the…

Engineer brothers found Forge to modernize hardware procurement

Raspberry Pi has released a $70 AI extension kit with a neural network inference accelerator that can be used for local inferencing, for the Raspberry Pi 5.

Raspberry Pi partners with Hailo for its AI extension kit

When Stacklet’s founders, Travis Stanfield and Kapil Thangavelu, came out of Capital One in 2020 to launch their startup, most companies weren’t all that concerned with constraining cloud costs. But…

Stacklet sees demand grow as companies take cloud cost control more seriously

Fivetran’s Managed Data Lake Service aims to remove the repetitive work of managing data lakes.

Fivetran launches a managed data lake service