- Leading smart location company Tile announced it closed $45 million in a Series C round of funding
Tile — the world’s leading smart location company — announced it closed $45 million in a Series C round of funding with a minority growth investment led by Francisco Partners. This round of funding will be used for accelerating plans to expand Tile’s embedded partnerships whereby third party products become findable.
A portion of the Series C investment was also from existing investors GGV Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners as well as new investors Bryant Stibel and SVB Financial Group.
The investment is going to allow Tile to aggressively grow internationally, expand into new product categories, and enhance its premium service to deliver more peace of mind for its growing community of users.
This announcement comes on the heels of Tile announcing strong results in early 2019, including growing sell-through in Europe by 160% in the most recent quarter as well as more than doubling unit sales on Prime Day in the U.S. Plus the company also reported that sign-ups for the Premium service — which launched in October 2018 — have significantly exceeded initial expectations and is going to be a key focus going forward.
Tile has also grown substantially in recent years as customers have been increasingly relying on the technology to do more than find lost keys. For example, users depend on the popular service to remind them about leaving work without their laptop, locating lost luggage, finding the family cat hiding in the backyard, and even keeping track of the jacket that a child often leaves behind.
Tile’s growth also coincides with a time when daily life is becoming more hectic as the average person spends nearly a year of their life looking for misplaced items, according to IOSR Journal of Business and Management.
“Millions of users already trust us to safeguard their belongings and find misplaced items — we will continue to deliver on that promise and more,” said Charles (CJ) Prober, CEO of Tile. “This investment ushers in a new chapter for Tile: with new products and expanded partnerships, we can better solve the everyday pain point of losing or misplacing the things that matter most to our global customer base.”
Tile’s embedded strategy started out with product partners like Bose, Skullcandy, and Sennheiser. And it is continuing to grow with semiconductor partners like Qualcomm, Nordic and Dialog resulting in millions of Tile-enabled third-party devices in several new verticals by the end of this year.
“Tile pioneered the smart location category,” added Andrew Kowal — a partner at Francisco Partners. “With Bluetooth technology projected to be included in nearly 30 billion devices shipping in the next five years, Tile is poised to deliver an embedded finding solution for a rapidly expanding market. We are extremely excited to be partnering with Tile as the company enters the next chapter of its growth story.”
