Berlin-based EMnify, which offers a cloud-based platform for cellular connectivity in the IoT stack, raises €50M from One Peak, bringing total funding to €70M
Patricia Allen / EU-Startups :
Context & Ripple Effects
EMnify's €50M round lands just months after rival 1NCE raised $50M from SoftBank and Deutsche Telekom for its cloud-based IoT connectivity service — the two German players are now funded on comparable scales in the same race to replace SIM-card-era carrier relationships with API-driven connectivity management. The backer also matters: One Peak previously led Hygraph's $30M Series B, making this a repeat bet on Berlin-based cloud infrastructure software.
First-order effects
- EMnify gains a war chest to scale its cloud-based cellular platform against 1NCE, which already claims 10 million managed connections worldwide and has Deutsche Telekom as both investor and potential channel.
Second-order effects
- With both German connectivity platforms freshly capitalized, IoT device makers choosing between them get a pricing and feature contest — and mobile operators face pressure to partner with or be disintermediated by these middleware layers.
Third-order effects
- If the 2021-22 funding pattern holds, cellular IoT connectivity consolidates around cloud-native platforms that abstract carriers entirely, turning network access into a commodity input beneath the software layer.
The trend: Cellular IoT connectivity is moving from carrier-billed SIMs to cloud-native platforms, and German startups are raising at matching scale to own that abstraction layer.