Australian fabless semiconductor company Morse Micro developing wifi for the IoT has closed a $140m series B funding round.

Morse Micro intends to use the capital to increase the scale and demand for its Wifi HaLow technology. It will focus on deepening its offerings, including the design of new products, while accelerating the go-to-market strategy for its existing Wifi HaLow chips and modules.

Wifi HaLow is a wifi standard tailored to meet the needs of the IoT. Its long-range connectivity extends the wifi range to more than 1km from the access point by using lower frequencies that better penetrates walls and other obstacles.

Low power consumption enables IoT devices to run on batteries for years. There is no need for proprietary hubs or gateways, enabling a single access point to support more than 8000 IoT devices. And it supports security protocols such as WPA3.

The round was led by MegaChips, an ASIC and SoC services company based in Japan, with participation from existing investors including Blackbird Ventures, Main Sequence Ventures, Clean Energy Finance, Skip Capital, Uniseed, SpringCapital, and Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull.

A business partnership with MegaChips accompanies the investment and could usher in a new era for Wifi HaLow across east Asia. In addition to manufacturing Morse Micro’s IEEE 802.11ah compliant semiconductors and modules, MegaChips will provide quality assurance, sales support and distribution channels that should deliver scale across the region. The two companies will also engage in joint sales and promotion activities to grow the market for Wifi HaLow.

“With MegaChips’ financial backing and robust manufacturing and sales support, Morse Micro will be poised to achieve our goal of revolutionising IoT connectivity with our growing portfolio of Wifi HaLow SoCs, modules, software and development tools,” said Michael De Nil, co-founder and chief executive officer at Morse Micro. “With growing market traction for Wifi HaLow in the IoT ecosystem, we’re at an exciting inflection point. MegaChips shares our vision to revolutionise connectivity. We are delighted to partner with them, and for the support we’ve had from all of our investors, as we take the next step forward in our company’s journey towards market scale and leadership.”

Since launch in 2016, Morse Micro has focused on long-range, low-power wireless connectivity. Today its portfolio includes what it claims is the industry’s smallest, fastest and lowest power Wifi HaLow compliant SoCs and modules. With use-cases that extend across the complete IoT ecosystem, from consumer to commercial, industrial to agricultural use, Morse Mirco is enabling wirelessly connected devices to achieve ten times longer range, covering hundred times the area or a thousand times the volume of traditional wifi networks.

“MegaChips pursues strategic partnerships and investments with promising start-ups like Morse Micro that have innovative ideas, cutting-edge applications and are expanding their businesses in areas such as industrial IoT, wireless communications and energy control,” said Tetsuo Hikawa, CEO of MegaChips Group. “Morse Micro’s visionary management team has had a tremendous impact on the wifi industry, and we expect more great accomplishments to come as we work together to ramp production and sales of their flagship Wifi HaLow products.”

MegaChips was established in 1990 as a fabless semiconductor company in Japan and has focused on R&D.

Morse Micro was founded by wifi pioneers and innovators Michael De Nil and Andrew Terry, and joined by the original wifi inventor Neil Weste and wireless industry veterans, whose teams designed wifi chips into billions of smartphones. Headquartered in Australia with offices in China, India, UK and USA, Morse Micro’s portfolio of IP and patents enables Wifi HaLow connectivity across the complete IoT ecosystem, from surveillance systems and access control to industrial automation and mobile devices.