Reach Power, which is developing products to wirelessly transmit electricity to power IoT and other devices, raised a $30M Series B led by DCVC
Context & Ripple Effects
Reach Power's raise lands in a small but persistent funding lane: making power itself disappear as a constraint on connected devices. Back in 2019, Wiliot raised a $30M Series B from AWS and Samsung for chips powered by ambient radio frequencies — the same bet that devices shouldn't need batteries or plugs — and Particle's back-end platform for IoT device maintenance shows the operational burden that battery replacement and device upkeep create at scale.
The lead investor matters as much as the amount. DCVC runs a deep-tech thesis — its fifth fund closed at $725M, up from $212M in its 2016 fourth fund — and wireless power delivery is exactly the kind of capital-intensive hardware bet that fund size is built for.
First-order effects
- Reach Power gets $30M to move wireless electricity transmission from R&D toward products for IoT and other devices, with DCVC now on the cap table pushing the deep-tech portfolio thesis.
- IoT device makers evaluating Reach gain a funded, venture-backed supplier for an alternative to batteries and wired power in deployments where cabling or battery swaps are the cost center.
Second-order effects
- Competing ambient-energy approaches like Wiliot's RF-powered chips and conventional battery-powered designs now face a rival whose value proposition removes the battery-replacement maintenance burden that platforms like Particle exist to manage.
- If wireless power delivery proves out, the buyer conversation shifts from per-device battery logistics to per-site power infrastructure — pulling facility owners and systems integrators into IoT procurement decisions they previously sat out.
Third-order effects
- The pattern across Wiliot, Particle, and Reach points toward IoT deployments being designed around power delivery as infrastructure — with the relationship between AI, IoT, and predictive maintenance on factory floors deepening as sensors stop being maintenance items themselves.
- Deep-tech funds of DCVC's growing size ($725M fifth fund versus $212M in 2016) are increasingly the capital source for hardware-layer bets that earlier-stage IoT rounds couldn't underwrite, reshaping which power and connectivity technologies reach commercialization.
The trend: IoT infrastructure investment is moving up the stack from managing devices to eliminating their power constraint, as ambient-energy and wireless-power approaches compete to make batteries optional.