Plume plans to invest in further research and is on the hunt for acquisitions after receiving $300 million in a new round of minority equity investment led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
The new funding round will also be used to expand the IoT company’s headcount.
It brings Plume’s valuation to $2.6 billion, with $697 million raised to date. In the two quarters since the last round of equity investment, Plume has added more than 13 million new households, over 350 million new managed devices to its global cloud platform, and acquired more than 60 new Communications Service Provider (CSP) customers.
“The pandemic has dramatically accelerated the adoption of digital services, increasing our dependence on smart devices,” said Nagraj Kashyap, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, who joins the Plume Board of Directors. “Through its innovative cloud data platform, we believe Plume’s consumer-first approach provides customers with reliable connectivity in their homes and beyond. We are pleased to partner with Fahri and the team to support their ambition of reinventing services for smart spaces globally.”
Recently, Plume made the HomePass smart home service available to all 25 million UK households, in partnership with Virgin Media, including those households in areas not yet covered by the provider’s broadband network footprint.
“Our explosive growth over the last few years is explained simply: Plume has reinvented how services for smart spaces are curated, delivered at scale, and managed and supported. We’re moving beyond the limitations of the legacy approaches that couple hardware and services into a ‘box’—choking the CSPs’ ability to introduce and scale delightful new experiences to the consumers rapidly and effectively,” said Fahri Diner, Founder and CEO of Plume. “Our vision and ambitions are perfectly aligned with SoftBank’s, and we are thankful for their support and confidence in Plume.”
SoftBank estimates that there will be one trillion connected devices by 2025, but CSPs have struggled to deliver a good working experience for the customer. Plume’s solution is to offer a suite of AI-driven, cloud-controlled services for residential consumers and small businesses. This includes self-optimizing Wi-Fi, secure parental and access controls, advanced device security, motion awareness, and back-end applications for CSPs, like predictive support tools and service & network analytics.
