The 10 Hottest Industrial IoT Startups Of 2018

With the industrial IoT market expected to reach $14.2 trillion by 2030, CRN looked at the 10 hottest, channel-friendly IIoT startups that stand to benefit from the sector's growth.

Red-Hot Startups

The industrial Internet of Things poses a massive opportunity to solution providers and yet only a small fraction of enterprises has found true business value.

Accenture estimates that the global industrial IoT market could be worth $14.2 trillion by 2030, with the U.S. market expected to represent the largest share at $7.1 trillion. At the same time, the consulting firm found that 73 percent of businesses had yet to make any solid progress in industrial IoT, underlining the need for vendors and solution providers to collaborate and bring businesses up to speed.

CRN looked at 10 of this year's hottest, channel-friendly industrial IoT startups that can help enterprises accelerate their digital transformation efforts.

Arundo Analytics

CEO: Tor Jakob Ramsøy

Arundo Analytics provides advanced analytics software that allows companies to easily integrate machine learning into their industrial IoT operations.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup's suite of software includes an Edge Agent connectivity and analytics solution for remote environments and a cloud-based hub for accessing machine learning models, as well as applications for equipment performance monitoring and predictive maintenance.

The company raised a $25 million financing round in January from several investors, which brought its total funding to more than $32.5 million.

Altizon

CEO: Vinay Nathan

Altizon provides an industrial IoT software platform that connects disparate systems and provides applications in a hybrid infrastructure.

The startup, which has offices in India and the U.S., has three core offerings. The Datonis IIoT Platform connects to devices, analyzes their data and integrates with existing business applications.

The second offering, Datonis Edge, provides analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities on edge devices whereas Datonis Manufacturing Intelligence connects to factory systems and measures key performance indicators.

Claroty

CEO: Amir Zilberstein

Claroty is an industrial IoT security provider that focuses on threat detection and monitoring for industrial control networks.

The New York-based startup raised a $60 million funding round in June that counted Rockwell Automation, Schneider Electric-backed Aster Capital and Siemens-backed Next47 among its investors, which brought total funding to $93 million.

Claroty's platform includes continuous vulnerability detection and threat monitoring, secure remote access and a security posture assessment tool.

Falkonry

CEO: Nikunj Mehta

Falkonry is a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based startup that provides predictive analytics tools for industrial IoT deployments.

The company in August made its first public move to sway channel partners to use its operational machine learning software that can integrate with existing software stacks and help industrial companies improve operations, throughput, quality and safety while reducing downtime.

Falkonry raised a $4.6 million Series A financing round in June led by Presidio Ventures, with participation from Polaris Partners, Zetta Venture Partners and Fortive.

FogHorn

CEO: David King

FogHorn is a provider of edge intelligence software that has scored partnerships with Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Google Cloud, among other large tech companies.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company recently announced a new partnership with Dell EMC that will allow the hardware vendor to sell gateways and other edge devices preconfigured with FogHorn's Lightning edge intelligence software.

FogHorn has raised $47.5 million in funding from investors, including Intel Capital, Dell Technologies Capital, GE Ventures and The Hive Group.

IoTium

CEO: Ron Victor

IoTium provides software-defined converged infrastructure that aims to simplify complexities found in secure industrial IoT deployments.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based startup raised a $13.6 million Series B financing round in September that was backed by former Cisco CEO John Chambers' venture capital firm, JC2 Ventures, along with GE Ventures, Juniper Ventures, Honeywell Ventures and former Cisco executive Pankaj Patel.

The company's platform includes a router, network switch, firewall VPN concentrator and hypervisor that allows it to combine security, networking and edge computing in one platform.

Inspirit IoT

CEO: Deming Chen

Inspirit IoT provides a combination of hardware accelerator solutions and machine learning and advanced synthesis tools to enable smart IoT applications.

The Champaign, Ill.-based startup raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding in June from Senscape Technologies, a developer of embedded AI sensing platforms.

The company is a strategic partner for Intel's IoT Solutions Alliance, as well as the IBM Business Partner and Siemens Frontier programs.

Litmus Automation

CEO: Vatsal Shah

Litmus Automation provides edge and cloud platforms for industrial IoT deployments that enable predictive maintenance, real-time production monitoring and other solutions.

The San Jose, Calif.-based startup's Loop platform allows system integrators, OEMs and enterprises to collect data from any IoT or edge devices, create alerts and automated actions and manage the entire lifecycle of devices on the network.

The company counts Nissan, Renault, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Intel as partners.

Seeq

CEO: Steve Sliwa

Seeq is a Seattle-based advanced analytics software provider that processes manufacturing data for industrial IoT deployments.

The startup raised a $23 million Series B financing round in July that was led by the Altira Group, a venture capital firm supported by large independent oil and gas operators, with participation from Siemens-backed next47, Chevron Technology Ventures and other investors.

The company serves more than 100 customers in oil and gas, food and beverage and utilities, among other industrial verticals, with software that can help companies diagnose problems using historical data, monitor systems in real time and predict when systems will fail.

Xage Security

CEO: Duncan Greatwood

Xage Security provides what it calls the world's first blockchain-protected security platform for industrial IoT deployments.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup raised a $12 million Series A funding round that was backed by GE Ventures to accelerate development of its security fabric for industrial IoT edge networks and national infrastructure, among other things.

The company's platform provides a decentralized security layer that enables autonomous network communication and the establishment of trust at scale. The company is working with NTT Communications, GE Renewables and GlobaLogix on deployments.