Wiliot raises $30M Series B from AWS, Samsung, and others to make chips powered by ambient radio frequencies, sources say at a post-money valuation of $120M
As we continue the quest for better and more efficient sources of energy to link up our connected world, companies that are developing …
Context & Ripple Effects
Wiliot's pitch is removing the battery from IoT sensing: chips that harvest the ambient radio frequencies already in the environment. The round's investor list is the story — AWS brings the cloud layer these tags would report into, Samsung the device-and-retail ecosystem where they'd be deployed, so both are buying early positions in the data path rather than just financial exposure.
The bet aged well by the corpus's own arc: two and a half years later Wiliot raised a $200M Series C led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 as it pivoted toward an SaaS model, a step-change that makes this $120M post-money round look like the cheap entry point.
First-order effects
- Wiliot gets $30M plus two strategic shareholders whose platforms — AWS cloud and Samsung devices — double as distribution channels for battery-free tags.
- AWS and Samsung secure early influence over an emerging sensor category at a reported $120M valuation, before the technology has proven at scale.
Second-order effects
- Strategic validation pulls more capital into cutting cords and batteries from connected devices: Reach Power later raised a $30M Series B for wirelessly transmitting electricity to IoT devices, attacking the same constraint from the power-transmission side.
- Competing approaches face a bar set higher — uBeam's ultrasound wireless charging was chasing a $500M+ valuation at Series B, so later entrants now have to justify pricing against a battery-free chip alternative.
Third-order effects
- If harvesting beats charging for low-power sensors, IoT hardware margins compress and value migrates to software subscriptions — exactly the SaaS pivot Wiliot itself made by its Series C.
- Corporate strategics (cloud providers, device makers) become the gatekeepers deciding which sensor architectures reach scale, echoing how Samsung's investment arm keeps reappearing across chip categories in the coverage.
The trend: Battery-free, ambient-powered computing is moving from venture experiment to platform business, with cloud and device giants buying positions across both the chips and the power layer.