Sierra Wireless acquire Mobiquithings to scale up their IoT Network

Sierra Wireless has acquired French IoT startup Mobiquithings, the two companies announced this week. The acquisition, which will accelerate growth for Sierra Wireless as an IoT network provider, is yet another exit for the French IoT space, after Alcatel-Lucent sold to Nokia earlier this year. Notably, Mobiquithings, which provides similar network services to that of SIGFOX (€100 Million raised earlier this year) & Actility ($25 Million raised last week), reached its acquisition terms ($14 Million up front plus dividends on revenue through 2017, which, based on projections, could value the exit as high as $30 Million, according to sources).
I had been speaking this past year with both Sierra Wireless and Mobiquithings founder Cyril Hullin about the Connected Conference (neither of whom participated this year, unfortunately), and Hullin spoke of Mobiquithings’ success despite not having raised the major fundraising rounds that his competitors had raised. Together with Sierra Wireless, Mobiquithings will have access to their resources and existing infrastructure, and I expect the two will make a dangerous combination (for SIGFOX, LoRa and others, that is).

Looking at Mobiquithings’ core segments – transportation, healthcare, maintenance, automobile & security – it’s clear that Mobiquithings isn’t making a play to be the network for the next Thermostat or Scale. They went down a powerful B2B route, and got big-name partners like Renault, and given that they were expecting profitability in the coming years, it looks like they were making compelling arguments for their 75 clients.