Charter, Qualcomm Ventures, Belkin and Service Electric Cablevision come on board as equity investors in a whole-home WiFi and smart home software company that has now raised about $127 million.

Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor

February 26, 2020

3 Min Read
Plume banks another $85M

Smart home software specialist Plume said it has wrapped up an $85 million round of financing that includes backing from Charter Communications, Qualcomm Ventures, Belkin and Service Electric Cablevision.

Plume's latest round includes $60 million in Series D preferred equity and $25 million in debt financing, extending the company's total equity funding to $127 million. Plume said existing investors Liberty Global and Shaw Communications also participated in the round.

Figure 1: Plume's main focus is software, but the company also designs and sells Pod-branded WiFi extenders. Image source: Plume. Plume's main focus is software, but the company also designs and sells Pod-branded WiFi extenders.
Image source: Plume.

Comcast is also among Plume's financial backers and customers. Andrew Ip, SVP of emerging technology and innovation at Charter, has joined the Plume board following the operator's investment.

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Why this matters
The new round gives Plume more financial runway as it looks to expand the reach and scope of a whole home WiFi and smart home services and analytics platform that recently added Plume Motion, a motion detection enhancement developed in partnership with AI specialist Cognitive Systems.

Plume will also be looking to expand the reach of OpenSync, an open source framework that serves as an abstraction layer capable of supporting a wide range of connected IoT devices from third parties. Plume says OpenSync is present on about 15 million access points and other IoT devices made by vendors such as CommScope/Arris, Hitron Technologies, Sagemcom, Sercomm, Technicolor and Ubee. Plume is also getting support from reference designs from chipmakers Broadcom, Celeno, Mediatek, Qualcomm and Quantenna. Additionally, OpenSync was recently adopted by the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) as its open access point software stack.

Plume, which competes with companies such as AirTies, Minim and Amazon's eero, says its technology has been deployed on north of 650 million devices and adopted by more than 30 service providers, including Comcast, Armstrong Cable, Bell, Shaw Communications, Virgin Media/Liberty Global, Japan's J:COM and Charter, which is using Plume's tech for the MSO's new in-home, advanced WiFi service. Although Plume is primarily a software company, it also designs and sells WiFi extenders.

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— Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor, Light Reading

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About the Author(s)

Jeff Baumgartner

Senior Editor, Light Reading

Jeff Baumgartner is a Senior Editor for Light Reading and is responsible for the day-to-day news coverage and analysis of the cable and video sectors. Follow him on X and LinkedIn.

Baumgartner also served as Site Editor for Light Reading Cable from 2007-2013. In between his two stints at Light Reading, he led tech coverage for Multichannel News and was a regular contributor to Broadcasting + Cable. Baumgartner was named to the 2018 class of the Cable TV Pioneers.

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