WigWag, Inc., the award winning open-source platform company weaving together the fragmented Internet of Things (IoT), announced today it has raised $3.175 million in seed funding led by Palo Alto-based CSC Venture Capital. The seed funding will be used to accelerate product development, expand the Austin-based development and marketing teams, and launch the company’s platform and consumer products.
“According to Gartner, by 2022 the typical U.S. household will contain over 500 connected devices,” said Ed Hemphill, WigWag co-founder and CEO. “As we enter into a Jetson-esque age of true smart environments, the world of traditional Internet protocol [IP] networking will merge with IoT technologies. That massive change, which involves more intelligence being placed at the network edge, creates a tremendous challenge for traditional network equipment manufacturers and a tremendous opportunity for us.”
To sum up the market opportunity, Hemphill added, “There is a multi-trillion dollar opportunity for companies making IP networking and IoT work together by creating entirely new applications at the network edge.”
Over the last two years, WigWag has built an open-source IoT platform designed to help service providers, developers and consumers manage a very messy world of connected, smart devices. WigWag’s solutions transform the physical world of smart devices into a programmable platform enabling the IoT to work together as a system. The company’s platform makes it possible for developers to create applications that do things like adjust to an individual’s preferences of lighting, temperature or music automatically. A world where you can easily check on loved ones and protect what matters most to you, where environments respond individually to people’s behavior, and a less wasteful world to deliver optimal comfort while saving time, resources, and money.
The seed round was led by CSC Venture Capital, the Silicon Valley-based investment arm of CSC Group, one of the premier private investment firms in China with over $13 billion of capital under management.
“CSC Venture Capital invests in companies that have the capacity to radically transform new markets and where we see major trends on the cusp of significant adoption,” says Veronica Wu, President of CSC Group International Corp. “We believe the timing is right for the Internet of Things. However, navigating the plethora of standards/protocols pose significant challenge for adoption. We believe WigWag’s technology could dramatically simplify go to market for companies wanting to deliver intelligent and secure IoT solutions to consumers.”
“The combination of CSC’s financial resources, global experience with start-ups and new markets, along with our strategic partnership and the manufacturing clout of Foxconn, enable WigWag to focus on scaling,” added Hemphill.
WigWag is actively hiring in Austin to fill new positions in software development, testing and marketing. To learn more about open positions, visit http://jobs.wigwag.com.
