Enabling Enterprises to Move their IoT Data
Why we invested in HiveMQ
We are thrilled to lead the € 9.3m seed financing round of Landshut-based HiveMQ alongside Senovo and prominent angel investors. Here is why we think the time has come for HiveMQ to empower enterprises to move IoT data effortlessly.
Data is the decisive advantage in tomorrow’s world
There’s no denying it — the Internet of Things (IoT) is fundamentally changing data generation. As it progresses from mere anticipation to widespread commercial use, IoT is finding its way horizontally into various industries and diverse applications. By 2025, there will be 75bn connected IoT devices (up from 36bn in 2021), generating almost 80 zettabytes worth of data points. Most importantly, 75% of this data will be generated and processed outside of a traditional, centralized data center or the cloud. One of the sectors most deeply affected by this transformation is the automotive industry, where the IoT market will exceed $ 500bn by 2025.
Automotive IoT applications range from Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) solutions and real-time vehicle telematics, all the way to connected car platforms. Particular use-cases include the data flow resulting from the continuous communication of the car via the mobile network to a backend cloud, where a scalable, mid-layer architecture is necessary. This missing infrastructure needs to solve the present challenges around data flow & scale, transforming the IoT middle layer from a current bottleneck to an enabler of scalable, sustainable and reliable data movement.
As companies seek to build on the enormous opportunities offered by leveraging data from connected devices, the requirement for a middleware platform that is built for the continuous IoT data stream and handling of millions of always-connected devices becomes apparent.
This is exactly where HiveMQ and its cloud-native IoT messaging solution come into play.
HiveMQ enables enterprises to move IoT data effortlessly between device, edge and cloud
The bedrock of our investment hypothesis was structured around HiveMQ’s uniquely built technical architecture. Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT), originally co-authored by IBM in 1999, is simply awesome when it comes to Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication. Due to its applied publish-subscribe pattern, it offers great scalability even with thousands of connected devices. In today’s rapidly developing IoT environment, the ever increasing requirements for MQTT, with regard to exponential scalability as well as no client and topic limits, are exceeding the capabilities of existing solutions. Legacy messaging technology has not been built for millions of devices and millions of queues, therefore limiting its scalability for IoT data.
In today’s rapidly developing IoT environment, the ever increasing requirements for MQTT, with regard to exponential scalability as well as no client and topic limits, are exceeding the capabilities of existing solutions.
For a concrete example, look to traditional event streaming platforms: They were originally made for enterprise IT, and consequently are not suitable for handling the millions of endpoints provided by connected IoT devices.
A team of inspiring entrepreneurs already serving a global customer base
We were extremely impressed when we visited the company on-premise in Landshut and worked with the team around Christian, Dominik and Christoph. Having known each other since their studies, the team started working together over 8 years ago, fully-bootstrapping HiveMQ as a cash flow positive firm. Only when the sheer size of customer inbounds reached levels that the team was not able to process with their own resources, external financing came into question.
What struck us most, and in our opinion makes HiveMQ itself so special, was the incredible product-driven culture we experienced on-site. The explicit focus on quality and reliability across every aspect of the firm; from providing a 99.9% up-time for customers, to running a well-structured organization with 36 full-time employees, reinforced our strong perception of the team’s hands-on mentality and impressive work ethic. The track record of HiveMQ to-date undoubtedly solidifies our view of Christian, Dominik and Christoph as exceptional entrepreneurs, and we are excited to accompany them on their journey over the coming years.
HiveMQ is set to define the new category standard in IoT messaging
With HiveMQ established as the missing piece that makes the paradigm shift of working with IoT devices possible, the company will now jointly work on becoming the cloud native IoT middleware for enterprise grade IoT data movement. This vision of enabling efficient IoT solutions encompasses many different use-cases, for example in the automotive industry, to create the next generation of connected cars. Here, a new software architecture is required to support connected car platforms that enhance the driving experience and create new revenue opportunities for OEMs.
HiveMQ provides the core infrastructure to enable the bi-directional movement of information from the vehicle to the cloud in a reliable, scalable and efficient manner.
We are thrilled to lead the round together with Senovo (🥳 Markus Grundmann & Lucas Behem), as well as have renown industry experts and business angels to co-invest with us, such as Mirko Novakovic, Ali Kutay, Daniel Schellhoss & Charlie Songhurst.
Team HiveMQ, welcome to the #EBVCgang — we are ready to shape the future of IoT data movement together!
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