California-based IoT platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company Afero has closed a $50m series C funding round.

Afero provides hardened security at every level of the platform, simplifies onboarding to improve user experiences and streamlines artificial intelligence. The PaaS can accelerate time to market by unifying embedded, mobile and cloud for both IoT users and companies deploying complex IoT programmes.

The start-up’s team is comprised of mobile, hardware, security and cloud veterans from Google, Apple, Nest, Danger, Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, Netflix and other platform companies.

Afero’s platform enables secure device connectivity from manufacturing to consumer use. The company’s software enables secure communication across devices such as all types of smart home products ranging from light bulbs to fans, to connected thermostats. The platform also provides secure cloud communication between the device and Afero’s hosted cloud services.

Private equity firm Crosspoint Capital Partners led the round.

“We’re excited to support Afero at a critical point in the company’s growth given the profound market demand for connected devices,” said Hugh Thompson, managing partner of Crosspoint Capital, who will join Afero’s board of directors. “Repurposing and reducing traditional operating systems such as Linux is not a viable path to support the wide range of IoT devices that consumers and businesses want to buy. Afero offers a purpose-built end-to-end platform that allows developers to quickly and elegantly deploy connectivity, cloud-based management and mobile app control with security at the core of their architecture.”

Joe Britt, co-founder and CEO of Afero, added: “Since 2014, Afero has enabled consumers and enterprises to better protect the devices they use daily, and we’re eager to extend our offerings across new markets such as logistics and healthcare. Crosspoint’s expertise will help us seize the massive opportunity in making connected devices safer and easier to use.”

The Home Depot also participated in the investment round. Earlier this year, Afero was the recipient of the Home Depot’s 2021 Innovation Award for its role in enabling the Home Depot to build smart homes with an intuitive platform and easy-to-set-up products.

“The Home Depot’s partnership with Afero has allowed us to provide a reliable smart home to our customers,” said Jim Hovis, senior vice president at Home Depot. “We’ve worked closely with Afero to bring new innovations leveraging the Hubspace platform and we look forward to our enhanced partnership.”