Australian startup Morse Micro, which is developing ultra low-power, long-range Wi-Fi HaLow chips for IoT environments, extends its Series A by $13M to $30M
David Manners / Electronics Weekly :
Context & Ripple Effects
Morse Micro's extended Series A is a bet on Wi-Fi HaLow — the long-range, ultra-low-power flavor of Wi-Fi aimed at IoT devices that battery constraints and range limits have kept off standard Wi-Fi. The extension to $30M buys the Sydney-based fabless startup runway to take its chips from development toward volume.
It sits in a crowded funding lane for low-power IoT silicon: Wiliot has raised successive rounds for ambient-RF-powered chips, culminating in a $200M Series C, and Ray Ozzie's Blues Wireless sells a $49 cellular connectivity chip as an alternative path to wide-area IoT. Morse Micro's arc validated the HaLow route — the round was followed by a $140M Series B led by MegaChips.
First-order effects
- Morse Micro gains $13M of additional Series A capital, extending its ability to fund HaLow chip development and early customer engagements without jumping straight to a larger round.
Second-order effects
- Rival IoT-connectivity approaches face a better-funded competitor: Wiliot's ambient-power chips and Blues Wireless's $49 cellular module now compete against a HaLow player with deeper backing and a standards-based radio.
Third-order effects
- If HaLow adoption holds, wide-area IoT connectivity fragments further among competing radios — licensed cellular, proprietary modules, and long-range Wi-Fi — pushing device makers toward multi-standard silicon suppliers rather than single-technology vendors.
The trend: Venture capital is consolidating behind specialized low-power connectivity silicon for IoT, with each standard — HaLow, ambient RF, cheap cellular — backed by its own increasingly well-funded champion.