Huawei wants to build smarter cities with $25 million acquisition of UK-based startup

Chinese phone and telecom equipment maker Huawei has bought UK-based internet-of-things startup Neul for US$25 million, according to Business Weekly.

Rather than the wearables and home appliances that we often associate with the internet-of-things movement, Neul focuses on smart city and industrial applications – it makes the sensors that can be used in oil and gas refining, agriculture, transportation, construction, healthcare, and utilities. For example, these sensors can be used to monitor water and fertilizer levels on farms, send alerts when public trash bins need to be emptied, and check up on the construction of bridges, among many other functions.

Besides making those sensors, Neul’s website says that it also leases base stations and provides a network-as-a-service to mobile network operators that all those sensors connect to, which operate at one-tenth of conventional cellular wireless networks. That effectively makes it a one-stop-shop for creating a fully-connected smart city.

Huawei didn’t reveal any details of the deal, but a look at its growing telecommunications manufacturing arm makes it pretty clear why it’s interested in Neul. Huawei is a world leader alongside Ericsson when it comes to building and maintaining mobile infrastructure, especially in Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Right now, it mainly focuses on building LTE networks under government and large corporate contracts. Expanding into mass-scale internet of things infrastructure is a logical next step that compliments its existing strategy.

See: Huawei is quietly taking over the world, minus the US

Neul previously raised a US$18.8 million investment from Draper Fisher Jurveston, IQ Capital Partners, and Cambridge Business Angels. At just US$25 million, it looks like Huawei got the company for a steal. Business Weekly reports the company was unsuccessful at finding a suitable investor and was considering a pivot to administration rather than manufacturing. “The urgency of the situation seems to have accelerated the Huawei deal,” it reports.

(Source: Business Weekly)