Massachusetts-based Blues Wireless, a provider of embedded cellular products, has raised $22m in series A funding.

The money will be used to expand its global marketing, sales and operations, and support further investment in R&D for hardware and associated services to integrate data into cloud applications.

Blues Wireless announced the general availability of its flagship product, Notecard, in late 2020. Notecard is a cost-effective way to add LTE and 5G cellular connectivity to most products or services.

“We offer a simple, affordable solution to a complex and costly problem: helping companies connect their products to the cloud, securely and with minimal effort,” said Ray Ozzie, CEO of Blues Wireless. “Since bringing Notecard to market, we’ve had great feedback and strong demand. This funding, combined with our world-class team and investors, will help to accelerate our progress towards connecting billions of customers’ remote assets to the cloud.”

Whether for asset tracking, remote control or performance analytics, almost every company needs to connect their product or service to the cloud to deliver a better customer experience, unlock revenue opportunities or run a more efficient business. Building, delivering and securely operating cellular-connected products, however, is a resource-intensive, costly and complex task that most organisations are not equipped to do on their own.

Blues Wireless is focused on addressing this challenge, providing affordable, quick-to-deploy products that take the hassle out of connecting virtually any device or product to the cloud, globally.

The funding round was led by Sequoia Capital and Lachy Groom, along with XYZ Venture Capital and returning investor Bill Gates.

“Despite the advent of IoT, most machines and devices are still not connected due to building and shipping complexities,” said Mike Vernal, partner at Sequoia. “Blues Wireless solves these issues by providing a simple way to build cellular connectivity into any device. We’ve been deep believers in Ray’s vision for mass-scale IoT since the seed, and we are excited to double down as the company grows.”

Blues Wireless previously raised $11m in funding for its seed round in March 2020.

Founded in 2019, Blues Wireless created Notecard, said to be the fastest and most cost-effective way to add wireless connectivity to any product. Notecard is a secure system on a module (SoM) with embedded ten-year global connectivity that allows any developer to send data from remote assets using JSon and two-lines of code. The data are routed to the cloud applications of the users’ choice, again using JSon and Rest.

Blues’ customers represent companies spanning agriculture, automotive, construction, healthcare, industrial, manufacturing, retail, supply chain, cold chain, transportation and logistics. Use cases range from simple tracking and remote monitoring to edge analytics and remote control.

Blues Wireless is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.