Startups

Expeto, a startup selling tools to manage private cellular networks, raises $12M

Comment

Picture of some telephone wireless antenna, a base station for 3G, 4G and 5G phone reception and transmission.
Image Credits: BalkansCat / Getty Images

There’s a growing market for private cellular networks, or dedicated cell networks configured to support a company’s specific requirements within a confined area (think a warehouse or wind farm). For example, some mining and energy companies have adopted private cellular networks to help facilitate operations that span over significant distances, where the increased range of cellular offers advantages compared to the Wi-Fi alternatives.

A number of major vendors provide private cellular network services, including AT&T and T-Mobile, as do some startups, including Celona, Anterix and Airspan Networks. (Recently, asset management giant BlackRock announced that it’ll deploy a private network at its new headquarters in partnership with Verizon.) But that hasn’t stopped new ventures from cropping up to challenge the incumbents. See Expeto, which is developing a platform that allows corporate customers to extend their private networks via virtually any type of cellular connectivity.

Demonstrating that there’s investor appetite for upstarts in the market, Expeto this week closed a $12 million Series B round led by Sorenson Capital with participation from 5G Open Innovation Lab, Samsung Next and Mistral Venture Partners. Bringing Expeto’s total raised to over $25 million (inclusive of $5 million in debt financing), the proceeds will be put toward product R&D as well as customer and partner acquisition, according to CEO Michael Anderson.

“Large, mission-critical enterprises in sectors like energy, mining and manufacturing need mobile connectivity to support next-gen use cases. But today, mobile operator connectivity is hard to buy, integrate and manage,” Anderson told TechCrunch in an email interview. “If they want connectivity, enterprises have to deal with this mobile network operator (MNO) over here and that MNO over there … Expeto lets enterprises manage mobile connectivity as if it were part of their own network.”

Co-founded in 2015 by Terje Strand, Ryley MacKenzie and Brian Baird, with Anderson coming onboard in 2020, Expeto doesn’t sell cell service. Instead, it offers tools to enable companies to manage multiple private cellular networks, including 3G, 4G and 5G networks, from a single pane of glass. Expeto supports managing network policies in addition to monitoring network usage and performance, and it is designed to work from behind a corporate firewall, in a private or public cloud, at the edge or from a geographically remote site depending on the use case requirements.

“With Expeto, enterprises see just one network — no matter how many mobile network operators or deployment sites they’re managing,” Anderson said. “[They can deliver] mobility for any type of device using just a single SIM [card], maintain network device privileges across different connectivity types and physical sites [and] make real-time, self-service changes to the mobile networks they manage.”

Expeto currently has “more than” 20 customers supporting over 50 private wireless sites, according to Anderson, who wouldn’t reveal revenue figures when asked. He claims that the pandemic has driven “significant demand” for Expeto’s products as companies embrace automation and remote operations, even as some organizations look to reduce costs in the face of economic uncertainty.

To his point, there appears to be high interest among the enterprise in deploying private cell networks. A recent by TECHnalysis Research survey of over 600 IT decision-makers found that nearly three-quarters believe their company will eventually use a private 5G network. A separate report from ABI Research estimates that the market for 5G private networks will reach $47.5 billion in 2030, up from $3.7 billion in 2021.

“Because Expeto’s use cases are associated with meaningful and relevant advances in operational efficiencies and growth initiatives, we have not experienced significant headwinds and we continue to sell on the basis of the savings and efficiencies Expeto’s platform uniquely enables,” Anderson said. “We plan to raise our next round of capital in the second half of 2024. We determined that the best approach to continue our high-growth momentum is a financial structure comprising equity and debt with focus and accountability to deliver differentiated growth, innovation and references from recognized leaders in multiple vertical markets.”

Samsung Next’s Andy Duong argues that Expeto is “uniquely positioned” to scale by leveraging its customer base as a distribution channel. The long-term play could be collaborating with cell providers to sell additional services; Expeto already works with Nokia and Ericsson for their radio access networks, the parts of mobile networks that connect devices like smartphones to the cloud.

“We invested in Expeto because it simplifies enterprise networking over private and public mobile networks,” he added. “While 5G’s network slices can be customized to meet the service-level agreement for emerging connected applications, they also bring additional complexities in network management. This is made easier thanks to Expeto’s cloud-based platform that enables hybrid private mobile networks for enterprise customers.”

More TechCrunch

The French Secretary of State for the Digital Economy as of this year, Marina Ferrari, revealed this year’s laureates during VivaTech week in Paris. According to its promoters, this fifth…

The biggest French startups in 2024 according to the French government

Spotify is notifying customers who purchased its Car Thing product that the devices will stop working after December 9, 2024. The company discontinued the device back in July 2022, but…

Spotify to shut off Car Thing for good, leading users to demand refunds

Elon Musk’s X is preparing to make “likes” private on the social network, in a change that could potentially confuse users over the difference between something they’ve favorited and something…

X should bring back stars, not hide ‘likes’

The FCC has proposed a $6 million fine for the scammer who used voice-cloning tech to impersonate President Biden in a series of illegal robocalls during a New Hampshire primary…

$6M fine for robocaller who used AI to clone Biden’s voice

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Is it…

Tesla lobbies for Elon and Kia taps into the GenAI hype

Crowdaa is an app that allows non-developers to easily create and release apps on the mobile store. 

App developer Crowdaa raises €1.2M and plans a US expansion

Back in 2019, Canva, the wildly successful design tool, introduced what the company was calling an enterprise product, but in reality it was more geared toward teams than fulfilling true…

Canva launches a proper enterprise product — and they mean it this time

TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 isn’t just an event for innovation; it’s a platform where your voice matters. With the Disrupt 2024 Audience Choice Program, you have the power to shape the…

2 days left to vote for Disrupt Audience Choice

The United States Department of Justice and 30 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, for alleged monopolistic practices. Live Nation and…

Ticketmaster is at the heart of a US antitrust lawsuit against parent company Live Nation

The U.K. will shortly get its own rulebook for Big Tech, after peers in the House of Lords agreed Thursday afternoon to pass the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer bill…

‘Pro-competition’ rules for Big Tech make it through UK’s pre-election wash-up

Spotify’s addition of its AI DJ feature, which introduces personalized song selections to users, was the company’s first step into an AI future. Now, Spotify is developing an alternative version…

Spotify experiments with an AI DJ that speaks Spanish

Call Arc can help answer immediate and small questions, according to the company. 

Arc Search’s new Call Arc feature lets you ask questions by ‘making a phone call’

After multiple delays, Apple and the Paris area transportation authority rolled out support for Paris transit passes in Apple Wallet. It means that people can now use their iPhone or…

Paris transit passes now available in iPhone’s Wallet app

Redwood Materials, the battery recycling startup founded by former Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, will be recycling production scrap for batteries going into General Motors electric vehicles.  The company announced Thursday…

Redwood Materials is partnering with Ultium Cells to recycle GM’s EV battery scrap

A new startup called Auggie is aiming to give parents a single platform where they can shop for products and connect with each other. The company’s new app, which launched…

Auggie’s new app helps parents find community and shop

Andrej Safundzic, Alan Flores Lopez and Leo Mehr met in a class at Stanford focusing on ethics, public policy and technological change. Safundzic — speaking to TechCrunch — says that…

Lumos helps companies manage their employees’ identities — and access

Remark trains AI models on human product experts to create personas that can answer questions with the same style of their human counterparts.

Remark puts thousands of human product experts into AI form

ZeroPoint claims to have solved compression problems with hyper-fast, low-level memory compression that requires no real changes to the rest of the computing system.

ZeroPoint’s nanosecond-scale memory compression could tame power-hungry AI infrastructure

In 2021, Roi Ravhon, Asaf Liveanu and Yizhar Gilboa came together to found Finout, an enterprise-focused toolset to help manage and optimize cloud costs. (We covered the company’s launch out…

Finout lands cash to grow its cloud spend management platform

On the heels of raising $102 million earlier this year, Bugcrowd is making good on its promise to use some of that funding to make acquisitions to strengthen its security…

Bugcrowd, the crowdsourced white-hat hacker platform, acquires Informer to ramp up its security chops

Google is preparing to build what will be the first subsea fiber-optic cable connecting the continents of Africa and Australia. The news comes as the major cloud hyperscalers battle it…

Google to build first subsea fiber-optic cable connecting Africa with Australia

The Kia EV3 — the new all-electric compact SUV revealed Thursday — illustrates a growing appetite among global automakers to bring generative AI into their vehicles.  The automaker said the…

The new Kia EV3 will have an AI assistant with ChatGPT DNA

Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, was working improperly for several hours on Thursday in Europe. At first, we noticed it wasn’t possible to perform a web search at all. Now it…

Bing’s API was down, taking Microsoft Copilot, DuckDuckGo and ChatGPT’s web search feature down too

If you thought autonomous driving was just for cars, think again. The “autonomous navigation” market — where ships steer themselves guided by AI, resulting in fuel and time savings —…

Autonomous shipping startup Orca AI tops up with $23M led by OCV Partners and MizMaa Ventures

The best known mycoprotein is probably Quorn, a meat substitute that’s fast approaching its 40th birthday. But Finnish biotech startup Enifer is cooking up something even older: Its proprietary single-cell…

Meet the Finnish biotech startup bringing a long-lost mycoprotein to your plate

Silo, a Bay Area food supply chain startup, has hit a rough patch. TechCrunch has learned that the company on Tuesday laid off roughly 30% of its staff, or north…

Food supply chain software maker Silo lays off ~30% of staff amid M&A discussions

Featured Article

Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men

Meanwhile, women and people of color are disproportionately impacted by irresponsible AI.

23 hours ago
Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men

If you’ve ever wanted to apply to Y Combinator, here’s some inside scoop on how the iconic accelerator goes about choosing companies.

Garry Tan has revealed his ‘secret sauce’ for getting into Y Combinator

Indian ride-hailing startup BluSmart has started operating in Dubai, TechCrunch has exclusively learned and confirmed with its executive. The move to Dubai, which has been rumored for months, could help…

India’s BluSmart is testing its ride-hailing service in Dubai