The Finnish industrial IoT start-up Wirepas announced that it’s raised EUR 14.4 million from investors ETF Partners, Inventure, KPN Ventures, TESI (Finnish Industry Investment) and Vito Ventures. The software company has built a wireless connectivity platform aimed at solving the major challenges of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and enabling broad adoption of massive IoT. The additional funding, including the participation of existing investors, takes the total investment in Wirepas to EUR 22 million.

Tesi, which is working with the European Investment Bank and the EU’s Fund for Strategic Investments, and Dutch operator KPN are new investors and will act as board observers. Wirepas will focus its investments on further strengthening and increasing the reach of the global Wirepas ecosystem as well as on continuous product development. During the last three years the company has built an ecosystem of semiconductor, module partners, OEMs and system integrators to serve end-users, resulting in millions of Wirepas enabled devices shipped.

The Wirepas Mesh system is used to connect smart meters, lights and other assets in supply chain and logistics to deliver the collected data to businesses to run their operations. Recently signed customer agreements include Prologis, Maersk and Fujitsu, adding to Wirepas’ existing customer base of over 100 companies.

Wirepas was founded in 2010 as a spin-off from Tampere University, where it was part of a research program to connect an unlimited amount of environmental sensors over wireless networks. Since 2014, the company has provided a hardware-independent radio communications protocol based on a de-centralized network topology, using a software licensing model. The company employs approximately 50 people in nine countries.