Ayla Taps Sunsea in $60M IoT Round

Ayla Networks, a provider of an Internet of Things (IoT) platform-as-a-service (PaaS) based in Santa Clara, Calif., on Thursday announced that it has raised $60 million in Series D financing led by Run Liang Tai Fund (RLT) and Sunsea Telecommunications Co. Ltd.

It's an impressive round for Ayla, which markets products targeted at large enterprises and home appliance vendors that want to extract IoT data, analyze it, and use it for business intelligence. The company says it will use the funds to expand product capabilities and a market "ecosystem."

The round also solidifies the partnership with Sunsea, a large provider of communications services based in Shenzhen, China. Sunsea and Ayla announced in September they would be teaming to package IoT solutions with communications services, and now Sunsea is also an investor in the company. Sunsea IoT, a subsidiary of Sunsea Telecommunications, has formed a joint venture with Ayla, named Ayla Sunsea, that will sell and deliver Ayla’s offerings to customers with headquarters in China.

Ayla is profiled in Futuriom's Ultimate Industrial IoT report, which is available as a premium download (use discount code "EDGE" to get 20% off). The company is focusing on collecting data from a variety of industrial equipment and home appliances to turn them into intelligent devices. The company has been focused on the Asia market, with partnerships with many of China's largest manufacturers, especially in the air conditioning segment.

“Ayla has amassed more than 100 large enterprise customers by solving their challenges regarding how to securely connect, manage and apply intelligence to all of their connected devices and sensors,” said David Friedman, Ayla CEO and co-founder, in a corporate release on Thursday.

Friedman says the company started in markets such as HVAC, large and small appliances, water management, and home control. More recently, the company has expanded into serving large retail, industrial, telco and service provider, and medical markets. Ayla sees the amount of data from these markets growing 5x year over year.

The Futuriom Ultimate Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) Report covers a wide range of communications and cloud technologies that are being applied to businesses around the world to provide connectivity, analysis, automation, and optimization of a range of industrial applications. For Futuriom community members, we are offering a special discount on a one-user license to this report for 20% off, which means you pay only $760! Go to the report page and use discount code "EDGE" for purchase.