Startups bringing digitization and IoT infrastructure to asset-heavy industries — such as manufacturing, logistics, mining, oil, utilities, and agriculture — are receiving a greater share of the deals going to the greater Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem.
Large corporates have also been involved in M&A in the space. Recently, General Electric, for example, acquired IoT platforms Bit Stew Systems and Nurego, in addition to two large 3D printing acquisitions this past fall.
Using CB Insights data, we looked at funding trends within IIoT.
Annual trend
Industrial IoT saw its 4th straight year of growth in 2016, with investment totaling over $2.2B across 321 deals. That translates to a 21% boom in deals and a 5% increase in funding.
Some of the largest deals of 2016 went to networking company Sigfox ($160M Series E), IoT platform C3 IoT ($70M Series D), enterprise smart glasses maker Osterhout Design Group ($58M Series A).
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Track IIoT startupsQuarterly trends
Interestingly, IIoT deals have been on a steady quarterly decline after peaking at 97 deals in Q1’16. Since then, there’s been a steady drop, but that’s had little impact on the amount of capital deployed to the industry. Last quarter, in Q4’16, funding totaled $579M, making it the second-largest quarter yet.
Large IIoT deals in Q4’16 went to autonomous robot maker Clearpath Robotics ($29.5M Series B), medical drone delivery startup Zipline International ($25M Series B), and IoT satellite networking company SatixFy ($25M Series B).
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