Samsung Invests In Sigfox's Network For Connected Objects
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch :
Context & Ripple Effects
This June 2015 stake made Samsung an early backer of Sigfox, the French startup building a dedicated communications network for Internet of Things devices rather than routing connected objects over carrier infrastructure (as its later company profile framed it). At the time, Sigfox was still proving that a purpose-built low-power network could reach global scale.
The bet aged well on paper: within eighteen months Sigfox had moved to expand its dedicated IoT network to 100 U.S. cities, closed a $160M Series E at a reported $637M valuation with around 10M devices registered, and Samsung itself committed $1.2B to IoT over four years in the US, splitting funds between startups and R&D — the same playbook this first investment opened.
First-order effects
- Samsung secures a position inside a dedicated IoT connectivity layer just as it scales its connected-objects ambitions, gaining early access to a network its own devices could ride on.
- Sigfox gains capital and validation from one of the world's largest consumer-electronics makers, de-risking its fund-raising for the network buildout that followed.
Second-order effects
- Samsung's subsequent $1.2B U.S. IoT program shows the Sigfox stake was the template for a portfolio approach: direct investments in startups alongside internal R&D rather than reliance on incumbent carriers.
- Sigfox's U.S. city expansion and its $160M raise put pressure on mobile operators to justify why IoT traffic should run on their networks when a cheaper, purpose-built alternative was scaling.
Third-order effects
- If dedicated low-power networks backed by device makers keep outgrowing carrier-based IoT offerings, connectivity becomes contested infrastructure — with consumer-electronics giants helping decide which network standard connected objects ship with.
- The pattern points toward IoT value consolidating around whoever owns both the endpoints and the network they communicate over, a structural shift carriers would have to answer with their own dedicated offerings or partnerships.
The trend: Consumer-electronics giants are buying into dedicated IoT networks instead of leaving connected-device connectivity to telecom carriers, with Samsung's early Sigfox bet as a leading data point.