Embedded connectivity startup Blues Wireless raises $32m to accelerate enterprise adoption of cellular IoT

Embedded connectivity startup Blues Wireless (Blues), announced a $32 million Series A1 funding round led by Positive Sum,  including new investors Four Rivers, Northgate, and Qualcomm. Previous backers Sequoia, Cascade, Lachy Groom and XYZ also participated.

By using the Blues Notecard and Notehub, businesses can quickly, securely, and cost-effectively connect their physical products to the cloud via cellular. The Notecard is a low-code data pump embedded within a customer's products, and the Notehub routes that data to the customer's cloud. Serving enterprise customers and developers alike, Blues is a hyper-scaler focused on 5G cellular Internet of Things (IoT).

Ray Ozzie, Founder and CEO, Blues: "Even in these difficult economic times, enterprises will not hesitate to invest in transforming their physical products to be capable of remote monitoring and control. To date, connecting products to the cloud using cellular has been a time-consuming and expensive endeavor, fraught with risk. Complexity kills. Blues has taken a unique, developer-centric approach that simply eliminates complexity, from device to cloud, enabling products realistically to go from prototype to scale deployment in months instead of years."

Alison Davis Riddell, Partner, Positive Sum: "We are thrilled to be partnering with Blues. They are well positioned to create an inflection point in IoT. Blues is clearly the culmination of Ray's life's work, bringing to bear all of his experience and passion. The company has strong market signal, with rapid growth and demand from some of the world's leading companies to connect their products to the cloud securely, economically, and with unprecedented speed. Having worked directly in the IoT space for six years, I can confidently say that Blues' approach is unlike anything we've seen, and the opportunity is tremendous."

Blues will be exhibiting at CES in Las Vegas (Booth #10752, North Hall) from January 5-8 with the message that any company can cloud-connect their product using cellular. Customers and partners will be alongside Blues in a shared exhibit space to demonstrate their industry-changing products, and to discuss the Notecard's and Notehub's role in helping them to win in the market.

www.blues.io