- Industrial IoT leader Samsara announced it raised $300 million in funding at a $6.3 billion valuation
Samsara — a leader in Industrial IoT — announced it has raised $300 million in a funding round to accelerate company growth. This round of funding is coming from new investors Tiger Global and Dragoneer along with existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst.
This funding round values Samsara at $6.3 billion. And it brings the total funding round raised to $530 million.
And the funding comes as demand from the company’s customers is continuing to surge. This past year, Samsara more than doubled their customer base to 10,000 and it expanded into 10 new countries all while growing revenue at over 200% annually.
Using this funding round, Samsara will develop new products for customers, expand into more geographical markets, and grow the team to continue delivering a great customer experience as the company scales.
“Our customers build and maintain the infrastructure critical to billions of people around the world — everything from helping provide water and food, to construction materials and energy. But even though these industries are critical, they haven’t benefited from software and cloud like the world of IT has. We are changing that,” said Samsara CEO and co-founder Sanjit Biswas. “Samsara’s approach is to use the Internet of Things to help increase the efficiency, safety, and sustainability of industrial operations. As Samsara has grown, we’ve continued to discover new opportunities to innovate on behalf of our customers, and this investment will enable us to further expand the solutions that we can provide to them.”
Samsara was launched in 2015 by Biswas and John Bicket. Biswas and Bicket previously founded Meraki (acquired by Cisco for $1.2 billion in 2012).
Samsara is known for serving customers in operational industries from transportation and logistics to field services, food production, energy, construction, local governments, and manufacturing. Even though these industries are the backbone of the economy, the assets and workers distributed across remote and often rugged environments have been underserved by technology.
Fortunately, the Internet of Things (IoT) — which is driven by advancements in wireless data, cameras, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence — is enabling these physical operations to adopt technology in powerful ways. McKinsey is predicting that Industrial IoT will provide over $2.2 trillion in global economic impact by 2025. And adoption has been surging as operators realize the benefits of IoT for their workers, their customers, and their bottom line.
With Samsara, customers manage their operations in real-time from Samsara’s cloud-based dashboard, leveraging integrated software for lowering fuel consumption, reduce emissions, prevent accidents, automate manual processes, improve quality, and avoid downtime. And the company’s growing suite of solutions include vehicle telematics, driver safety, mobile workflow and compliance, asset tracking, and industrial process controls through an integrated and open real-time platform.
Samsara has more than 10,000 customers. With Samsara, the City of Fort Lauderdale was able to reduce environmental impact as 1,700 citywide vehicle fleet has decreased fuel consumption by 5%, achieving the carbon emissions impact of planting nearly 20,000 trees while saving taxpayer dollars. And with dash cameras and AI-based driver coaching software, Simco reduced its distribution fleet’s accident rate by over 50%, reducing insurance premiums while helping their drivers come home safely. San Jose Water Company was able to improve customer service as real-time visibility into pumps and water equipment has informed capital planning and delivered better customer service for their 1 million customers. Plus leading UK-based construction company Collins Earthworks uses Samsara’s fuel usage reports to calculate exactly how load weight influences fuel usage on trips, leading to better cost estimates for loads.
The funding round will enable Samsara to add 1,000 new employees to accelerate expansion into Europe, Mexico, and Canada. And the company will grow its R&D team to build new products for our customers. Plus the funding will help scale Samsara support and account teams to maintain a great customer experience as they grow.
“Samsara has a unique ability to see 15 years ahead and plan for that future, while also executing at a pace that I’ve rarely seen before. In less than five years they’ve successfully created multiple product lines addressing diverse industries and geographies,” added Hemant Taneja, a managing director at General Catalyst. “Samsara is targeting a massive opportunity — operations represents over 20 percent of GDP. What they’ve already created is impressive but in 10 years we’ll look back and see that, where Samsara is today, was just the beginning.”
