Chicago-based Hologram, which develops a custom SIM card to give IoT devices data access from multiple carriers, raises a $65M Series B led by Tiger Global
Jim Dallke / Chicago Business Journal :
Context & Ripple Effects
Hologram's $65M round is the third 2021 bet the firm has made in hardware-adjacent infrastructure, following its $300M Series C lead in chipmaker Groq and its $35M Series B in edge-AI firm Deep Vision — a cadence that sits inside the broader pattern of Tiger Global's COVID-era pace fueling rapid unicorn creation. The round also lands in a Midwest corridor where Illinois-based Sibel Health later raised its own $33M Series B for connected health sensors.
The deal slots into a funded wave across the IoT stack: Hiber raised €26M months earlier for a satellite network tracking IoT devices globally, and Cognite pulled $150M at a $1.6B valuation for an IoT data platform serving heavy-asset companies. Hologram supplies the connectivity layer those platforms and fleets sit on top of.
First-order effects
- Hologram gains fresh capital to scale its multi-carrier SIM business, letting device makers buy data access as software rather than negotiating per-network contracts with individual carriers.
- Tiger Global extends its 2021 streak into IoT connectivity infrastructure, adding Hologram alongside Groq and Deep Vision as bets on layers beneath and beside cloud software.
Second-order effects
- Carriers risk being commoditized into interchangeable pipes under Hologram's abstraction, shifting pricing power toward whoever owns the device-to-cloud interface — the same dynamic pulling investment toward Hiber's satellite coverage and Cognite's data platform.
- Competitors in cellular IoT connectivity face pressure to match carrier-agnostic offerings, since enterprise buyers can now source redundancy across networks from one vendor.
Third-order effects
- If Tiger Global's pace holds, IoT infrastructure companies may reach scale on compressed timelines and elevated valuations — a dynamic sources describe as having fueled a rapid creation of billion-dollar startups during the period.
- The pattern points toward an industry structure where connectivity, compute, and analytics consolidate into vertically integrated platforms, with carriers increasingly disintermediated from their own subscribers.
The trend: Venture capital led by crossover firms like Tiger Global is funding every layer of the IoT stack — connectivity, satellites, chips, and analytics — as a single infrastructure buildout.