Finnish company Wirepas has raised €10m to accelerate the development of purpose-built non-cellular 5G technology for the IoT.

The Wirepas Massive large-scale mesh connectivity software is already being used by more than two hundred clients including Fujitsu, Prologis, Wurth, Schaeffler, Orange and Fagerhult.

Wirepas has seen an increased interest and demand from partners and customers to bring the product to market.

“Thanks to the great market interest and lead customers’ fast time to market targets, we have decided to accelerate the first non-cellular 5G product development,” said Teppo Hemiä, CEO of Wirepas. “We knew our solution was special and the need has become even more apparent and urgent over the past several months. This new injection of funds will help us continue to do what’s in our customers best interest, and that’s getting it done efficiently and as soon as possible. We target to have the commercial launch in 2022.”

More specifically, the funds will be used to strengthen Wirepas’ longer-term research and to develop the massive IoT technology. Wirepas will also be hiring with a focus on development, testing and delivery, all aspects needed to bring this to market.

Existing investors Karma and Tesi are providing the extra funding.

“Karma focuses on deep tech and the impact it can have,” said Tommi Uhari, partner at Karma. “Wirepas, with its solid team, technical strength, massive traction, and amazing steps in 5G, is in an ideal phase to benefit from more funding. We are convinced that Wirepas is changing the IoT landscape forever.”

The demand for affordable networks is high for businesses looking for scalable, high-density applications in a multitude of areas such as smart meters, building management systems, logistics and smart cities. More specifically, it will assist in the urbanisation, building and energy consumption in the construction of these smart cities. It also opens opportunities for new use cases, scaling at mass the levels of communication for future.

“This is exactly what an investor hopes to see,” said Juha Lehtola, head of direct VC investments at Tesi. “We knew Wirepas had a great read on the needs of its clients and industries that have been struggling to find a solution that truly works for them. We’re excited to see the technology deployed and true impact realised.”

This new 5G standard should mean, for the first time, any business, regardless of size, will be able to digitise their business with reliable and affordable 5G connectivity. It will allow industries to run their own independent IoT systems and develop services around their own expertise and business domain. It also lets them store and consume the data generated in the way they see best, whether on premises, in public cloud or anything in between.