- Radio spectrum company Aurora Insight announced it raised $18 million in Series A funding earlier this year led by Alsop Louie Partners and True Ventures
Aurora Insight — a company providing insight into the radio spectrum at the advent of 5G — announced it raised $18 million in Series A funding earlier this year led by Alsop Louie Partners and True Ventures. Tippet Venture Partners, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Promus Ventures, Alumni Ventures Group, ValueStream Ventures, and Intellectus Partners also joined the funding round.
Radio spectrum — which are the airwaves that make wireless communication possible — is considered a scarce and finite resource facing exponential demand. And more emerging technologies depend on wireless connectivity ranging from self-driving cars to smart cities. And data traffic continues to increase by 46% year-over-year.
Plus spectrum has become one of the most valuable resources in the digital economy. And Aurora Insight’s scalable and proprietary approach addresses the fundamental need for actionable insight into the spectrum environment thus enabling both wireless-centric operators and wireless-enabled technologies to stay ahead of new deployments, anticipate performance, and expand connectivity farther and faster.
“The boundaries of wireless are being redrawn,” said Aurora Insight co-founder and CEO Brian Mengwasser. “It’s not just about phones anymore. Buildings have become base stations, factories operate their own LTE and 5G networks, and connected cars have five integrated receivers for different networks. Our customers don’t have the time or money to deploy fleets of trucks and spectrum analyzers to determine if their wireless solutions are going to work. We enable more companies to design-to-reality and get more out of limited spectrum, which is part of everyone’s technology stack now.”
Aurora Insight — which has been quietly delivering spectrum intelligence across four continents to select clientele — will use the funding to scale deployment of its data-as-a-service offering to advance the frontier of wireless connectivity.
“The reality of massive MIMO beamforming, high frequencies, and dynamic access techniques employed by 5G networks means it’s both more difficult and more important to quantify the radio spectrum,” added Gilman Louie of Alsop Louie Partners, now a board member of Aurora. “Having the accurate and near-real-time feedback on the radio spectrum that Aurora’s technology offers could be the difference between building a 5G network right the first time, or having to build it twice.”
The conventional methods of measuring spectrum — limited and involve cumbersome field measurements — are considered outdated and offer poor visibility into spectrum availability and its impact on wireless applications. And Aurora has developed an autonomous sensor network (powered by machine learning and digital signal processing) to continuously sample and render the full radio spectrum environment into the first “dynamic map” of connectivity.
“Wireless spectrum is one of the most critical and valuable parts of the communications ecosystem worldwide,” explained Rohit Sharma, partner at True Ventures and Aurora Insight board member. “To date, it’s been a massive challenge to accurately measure and dynamically monitor the wireless spectrum in a way that enables the best use of this scarce commodity. Aurora’s proprietary approach gives businesses a unique way to analyze, predict, and rapidly enable the next-generation of wireless-enabled applications.”
