Led · Equity · May 2018

HMD Global designs and sells Nokia-branded Android smartphones that feature premium ZEISS imaging, market-leading reliability, and security promises including three-year monthly security updates and two-year Android upgrades under Android One. Since beginning operations in 2016 the company is active in 91 markets across eight regions, sells through 250,000 retail outlets, and has sold over 240 million phones. HMD has broadened its software and services footprint, launching the HMD Connect international data roaming service, enhancing mobile cybersecurity through the acquisition of Valona Labs assets, and opening an R&D Centre of Excellence in Tampere, Finland. The company says it is accelerating a shift to digital-first offerings in a post-COVID reality and strengthening partnerships with US carriers to make 5G smartphones more accessible. HMD plans to expand its presence in key growth markets including Brazil, Africa, and India and to evolve beyond hardware toward a more holistic mobile service provider. The recent strategic investment is intended to fuel these priorities and deepen collaboration with major industry partners. HMD Global is a Finnish company founded by former Nokia executives that builds Nokia‑branded Android smartphones. The company has been in operation for about a year‑and‑a‑half and has positioned itself especially in developing markets, adopting Google’s Android One program. Its product slate recently expanded at MWC where HMD announced five new phones, including a reboot of the 8110. HMD says it raised $100 million in a new financing that values the company at more than $1 billion. The company plans to use the capital to push more aggressively into the mobile category, doubling down on channel expansion in strategic markets while continuing to deliver product innovation. The article notes a potential headwind as the broader smartphone market begins to plateau, which could complicate HMD’s growth strategy.

Participated · Series D · Apr 2017

Actility develops industrial-grade low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) connectivity solutions for the Internet of Things, centered on its ThingPark™ platform and network technology. ThingPark™ is used to deploy, operate and maintain public and private wireless IoT networks within a unified, scalable infrastructure, and nearly 60 nationwide LoRaWAN network service providers and enterprises use the platform. The company serves multiple sectors including smart city (energy, water, waste), industrial equipment and fleet tracking, smart agriculture, worker safety, and healthcare (patient monitoring and elderly care). Through its subsidiary Abeeway, Actility provides patented ultra-low-power tracking solutions, and ThingPark Market offers interoperable gateways, devices and applications. The firm plans to use the new funds to accelerate development and deployment of its industrial IoT solutions, increase its R&D team, develop new roaming solutions, and pursue key acquisitions to drive growth. Olivier Hersent is founder and CEO and the company is based in Paris, France. Actility is an industry leader in LPWAN for the Internet of Things, with its ThingPark platform powering most national and large-scale LPWA rollouts worldwide. ThingPark supports LoRaWAN, LTE-M and NB-IoT and is complemented by a cohesive software stack (ThingPark OS, ThingPark X and ThingPark Market) that enables sensor-to-cloud application on-ramping and monetisation. The company is focusing expansion on industrial IoT verticals including logistics and supply chain, smart buildings, and energy & utilities, and reports rapidly growing global demand. Actility plans to accelerate its US strategy, build strength in China, speed deployment of its global location and tracking service, and pursue strategic acquisitions to broaden its technology portfolio. The company completed a $75M Series D funding round in a first closing that included new investors Creadev, Bosch and Inmarsat alongside existing backers such as Idinvest, Bpifrance, Ginko Ventures, KPN, Orange Digital Ventures, Swisscom and Foxconn; a second closing will add further strategic investors. The oversubscribed capital raise was achieved without involving banks, and Actility was founded in 2010. Actility, founded in 2010 in Paris, develops ThingPark, an IoT platform based on the LoRa specification. ThingPark targets deployments ranging from single enterprises to entire cities and focuses on connecting long-range, low-power sensors over unlicensed ISM-band spectrum. The platform aims to enable low-cost, fast rollouts of IoT networks and support devices optimized for long-range and battery-powered operation. The company said it will use the investment to continue building the product and for business development in France and internationally. The round included strategic carrier investors, reflecting interest from operators to act as network providers and systems integrators for IoT services. Actility also plans to expand its products into Asia with support from Foxconn.

Led · Equity · Nov 2016

Devialet produces high-end speaker systems and amplifiers and has broadened its lineup into personal audio (earbuds) and home soundbars such as the Dione. The company emphasizes engineering-led product development and unique audio technologies. It is pursuing global expansion with a particular focus on Asian markets and a licensing strategy. Devialet reports six retail locations in China and five in South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indonesia, and says Asia accounts for three of its five biggest countries by sales. The company recently secured new funding to support growth and product development. CEO Franck Lebouchard framed the new partnership as evidence of confidence in Devialet’s strategy and technologies. Devialet builds high-end sound technology and consumer audio products, anchored by its Phantom speaker and a portfolio of 107 patents and 61 international awards. The company is headquartered in Paris and was founded in 2007. It reports rapid growth—doubling its turnover every year—and employs about 230 people. Devialet plans to roll its technologies into automotive, television and IoT markets through strategic industrial partnerships. The company is expanding its retail footprint with additional immersive rooms and new flagship stores beyond Paris, London and Soho, New York. It will further invest in R&D to accelerate innovation and reinforce its patent portfolio while broadening adoption of Phantom across five continents. Devialet is a French audio-technology company with 88 patents and numerous awards for its amplifier engineering. Its headline product in this article is the Phantom, a spherical all-in-one wireless speaker offered as a 750-watt model and a 3,000-watt Silver Phantom. The standard Phantom is priced at $1,990 and the 3,000-watt Silver Phantom at $2,390. Devialet has sold amplifiers since 2010 and positions the Phantom to reproduce the soundstage and musicality of much larger speaker systems. The company has opened U.S. pre-orders and plans to begin shipping Phantom units to U.S. customers in July. Financially, Devialet announced a $20 million funding round, bringing its total capital raised to about $50 million.

Led · Series B · Jan 2016

Cedexis offers web-scale end-user-experience monitoring and real-time traffic routing across multiple clouds and networks, delivering products such as Cedexis Radar, Openmix and Impact. Radar crowdsources billions of real-user measurements a day from a community of nearly 1,000 enterprises; Openmix routes traffic for best performance, availability or cost; and Impact demonstrates the correlation of end-user performance to business KPIs. Its platform is used by nearly 1,000 global brands, including Accor Hotels, Airbus, Bloomberg, LinkedIn, Microsoft, PBS, Tumblr, Cartier, Comcast, Mozilla, Nissan and Shutterstock. The company is led by CEO Scott Grout and is based in Portland, Oregon, with offices in Paris, San Francisco, Brooklyn and London. Cedexis partners with leading CDN, cloud, hosting and APM providers globally. The company intends to use new funding to accelerate global growth and broaden solutions for OTT video, SaaS services and web application delivery. Cedexis builds on-demand tools (including Radar and Openmix) for real-user monitoring, Internet “pathfinder” routing, global traffic management, and application acceleration to improve performance and availability of web and mobile apps. The company’s offerings support use cases such as content routing, cloudbursting, CDN federation, and multi-vendor cloud storage. Cedexis says more than 150 customers, including global brands in retail, luxury goods and media, use its services. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Portland, OR, the company has shown revenue growth over the past 18 months. The product architecture is positioned to enable expanded applications across global web and cloud deployments. The company plans to use new funding to fuel U.S. market expansion and deepen customer engagements in Europe and the Asia Pacific.

Led · Equity · Jun 2015

Enevo provides comprehensive waste and recycling services by leveraging proprietary analytics software and dumpster sensor technology. Its platform allows account managers to monitor around-the-clock sensor data to manage alerts, compare dumpster pickups against collection schedules and work with haulers to adjust service levels. Building upon its dumpster sensor technology and waste analytics business, Enevo now offers full management of waste services for restaurant, retail and commercial property customers. The company was founded in 2010 by Fredrik Kekalainen, who serves as founder and CEO. Enevo raised $12M in funding and intends to use the proceeds to continue expanding its business reach. The company is headquartered in Espoo, Finland. Enevo provides ONe, an automated waste logistics operations management solution that creates and forecasts optimal waste collection schedules and routes. The product is designed to reduce costs and improve service quality by preventing waste bin overflows and excess fleet utilization. The solution is being deployed in 35 countries and used by 145 customers. Led by founder and CEO Fredrik Kekäläinen, the company is headquartered in Espoo, Finland. Enevo reported having previously secured $10.3M in funding prior to the most recent round. The company raised an additional $15.8M in the latest funding round. Enevo offers ONE, a sensor-based service that optimizes waste collection by analyzing data from small wireless sensors placed inside waste containers and recycling sites. The sensors send data to Enevo servers to determine if containers are full and when they should be emptied, allowing trucks to pick up only full bins and saving time and money. Founder and CEO Fredrik Kekalainen says the system shifts waste collection from a static, inefficient model to a dynamic, demand-based one. Enevo reports sensors deployed in 25 countries across North America and Europe and is expanding into new markets in the Middle East and Asia. The company’s main competitor mentioned in the article is SmartBin of Ireland. The article also notes an $8 million funding round from a group of investors. Enevo develops waste management logistics optimization systems using wireless sensors and data analytics. The company provides wireless sensors that monitor waste container fill levels in real time and gathers and analyzes that data to calculate optimal collection schedules and routes for waste collection fleets. Customers include several private and municipal waste management organizations. Led by CEO and co‑founder Fredrik Kekäläinen, Enevo is based in Espoo, Finland. The company completed a €2m funding round backed by Finnish Industry Investment and Lifeline Ventures. Enevo intends to use the funds to start worldwide deliveries.