SoftBank Leads $200M Investment Round In Fabless IoT Startup Wiliot

Fabless IoT startup Wiliot raised $200 million in a Series C funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, the company announced on Wednesday. The company’s previous investors include Amazon, Maersk, Qualcomm Ventures LLC, and Samsung Venture Investment Corp.

Founded in 2016, Wiliot’s vision is to expand the Internet of things (IoT) to include everyday products, adding intelligence to plastic crates, pharmaceuticals, packaging, clothes, and other products, connecting them to the internet. The company created a platform 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 environmental 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 company says these capabilities can transform the way products – from vaccine vials, foods, clothes, medicine etc — are made, distributed, sold, used, reused, and recycled by bringing real-time transparency to the supply chain and the ability for brands to understand inventory levels in retail channels.

“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,” the company said in a statement.

Wiliot’s current applications include food, retail, and healthcare. The company indicated it will use the latest round of capital to grow its team and scale its channels for the forthcoming launch of a new product that will offer “next-generation performance.”

“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.”

“By inventing the first hyper-scalable, self-powered computer that uses AI to sense the world, 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’s HQ and research and development team is based in Israel, with business development in California and Germany. The company also has offices in Ukraine, Australia, and Taiwan.