This morning, Seattle’s Balena announced it has raised $14.4 million in Series B funding. Leading the funding was OpenView, with participation also coming from Aspect Ventures, GE Ventures and Threshold Ventures — all existing investors in the company.
Since its founding in 2013, Balena has worked to improve the connectivity and computing power of connected IoT devices through edge computing. Balena’s specialty is helping companies that have many connected devices calling back to a central database. The tools they create help eliminate the friction caused by the volume of devices working to remotely access said database.
As IoT continues to move from special use cases to the mainstream, and the number of interconnected IoT devices around the globe pushes 20 million, solving problems inherent to this infrastructure is critical.
We believe that edge computing is the next major computing paradigm. It needs a scalable development platform to match.”
“We believe that edge computing is the next major computing paradigm,” said CEO Alexandros Marinos in a statement. “It needs a scalable development platform to match. We’re building that platform and making the edge accessible to mainstream developers.”
Marinos and his team of co-founders were developers themselves when they encountered the very problem that Balena works to solve.
One of Balena’s key capabilities is the power to push updates in code to all connected devices via a single master dashboard. Balena connects with the Balena OS on those devices, and is able to use containers to quickly pack, ship and unpack the new code to all the devices at once.
The company encourages other developers to iterate on its existing tools, and shares open source code on its website and sites like GitHub.
As for Balena itself, the company will use its Series B round to continue building out the capabilities of its core technology. In a statement on the funding, the company expressed a desire to establish itself as the “default choice” for companies building out IoT projects.
In addition to tech innovation, Balena plans to continue expanding its already-growing team. Roles are open across engineering, marketing and sales divisions.
While Balena’s headquarters are located in the Pike/Pine area of Seattle, the firm also boasts offices in Athens, London and Milan, in addition to a number of other remote workers around the world.
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