US-based Federated Wireless, offering shared spectrum services in the CBRS band, has raised a further $14 million in Series D funding, to go with its $58 million Series D announcement in February. It brings its total Series D round to $72 million, with “affiliates of” Fortress Investment Group, Giantleap Capital, and LightShed Ventures joining existing investor GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, with late new funds.
The Series D round brings the company’s total investment funds to approximately $213 million. It said the success of the round reflected the momentum in the market for private-edge LTE and 5G networking and computing solutions. The latest investment will go to accelerate growth in enterprise markets, it said, and in particular to accelerate time to market for “new product capabilities and ecosystem development”.
Federated Wireless also restated its long-held ambition to expand into international markets. It called private wireless a “disruptive technology” for enterprises, and shared spectrum (CBRS) an “ubiquitous resource” (and also an “innovative technology”) for delivering it, combining “the best attributes of traditional wireless and Wi-Fi – with lower fixed cost, higher quality, and greater efficiency and scale”.
Federated Wireless was the first in the US to deliver a spectrum access system (SAS) for enterprises to negotiate and manage CBRS spectrum. It claimed its SAS spectrum mechanism and 5G channel proposition have “made it possible for businesses to deliver innovations that defy imagination in the categories of IoT, virtual and augmented reality, digital twinning, telemedicine, drones, robotic agriculture, artificial intelligence and more”.
It said 350-odd customers and 85,000-odd connected devices in the US have tapped into CBRS via its SAS platform. It works with 40-odd device manufacturers and edge partners. Loren Buck, chief financial officer at Federated Wireless, commented: “Private wireless is one of the most transformative enterprise technologies to emerge since the cloud. We continue to invest aggressively to support explosive demand, maintain our industry leadership, and deliver on the promise of 5G private wireless for our clients.”
Fortress Investment Group is a global investment manager with approximately $53.3 billion of assets under management. Giantleap Capital is focused on investing in digital tech for critical industries. LightShed Ventures is an early-stage fund focused on “category defining startups”. All three are US-based.
