Plume secures US$85 million in funding round

Smart home services provider Plume has secured US$85 million in its latest financing round.

The vendor creates a WiFi mesh networking solution for homes, and has recently signed distribution deals with Liberty Global, WightFibre, VOO and Sunrise.

The company said that the raised money  includes US$60 million in Series D preferred equity and US$25 million in debt financing, bringing Plume’s total equity funding to US$127 million.

The new investor syndicate includes Charter Communications, Qualcomm, Belkin, and Service Electric Cablevision and took approximately 75% of the Series D round. Existing investors, including Liberty Global and Shaw Communications also participated in the new round of funding. The debt facility was provided by Silicon Valley Bank and WestRiver Group.

As a result of this round of funding, Andrew Ip, senior vice president, Emerging Technology & Innovation of Charter Communications joined Plume’s Board of Directors.

Ip said: “Our partnership with Plume has been critical to the success of Charter’s ‘Advanced In-Home WiFi’ roll-out and has enabled Charter to accelerate innovation and more rapidly deliver new features to our Spectrum Internet and WiFi customers – from the ability to optimize their home networks to greater control over their devices.

“Charter has seen first-hand the technical innovation of the Plume team and is pleased to join Plume’s syndicate. I look forward to supporting the next phase of Plume’s expansion.”

Ankur Prakash, vice president at Liberty Global Ventures and a board member of Plume said: “We’ve been enthusiastic investors and committed supporters of Plume since their Series A, and are now excited to partner with these industry leaders in the journey. It has been really satisfying to be a part of this incredible growth and such a talented team.”

This announcement comes shortly after news that telecom industry body the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) has adopted technologies from WiFi specialists Plume, ConnectUs Technologies and Tanaza to include in a new open-source WiFi software stack that includes Plume’s OpenSync.

Plume was the driving force behind OpenSync – a software stack designed to connect in-home hardware devices to the cloud.

Fahri Diner, co-founder and CEO of Plume, said: “We believe in the cloud, a massively scalable data-driven platform, a SaaS delivery model, and an open-source approach to build a market-leading, high-growth enterprise efficiently and with operating leverage. I’m hugely thankful for our people, customers, partners, and investors for helping us deliver on our promise, and honored by the confidence of our new investors and strategic partners.”