Nubix Secures $2.7M in Seed Funding to Meet Growing Demand for Edge-Native Applications
Edge-native application platform brings unprecedented agility and safety to commercial and industrial IoT; Tuscan Management led the round with strategic investment from Chevron Technology Ventures
SAN FRANCISCO – December 16, 2020 – Nubix today announced it has closed $2.7 million in seed financing led by Tuscan Management with strategic investment from Chevron Technology Ventures, in addition to participation from other new investors. The new round brings the total funding for the company to $4.5 million. Joshua Silber, managing partner at Tuscan Management, will join the company’s board. The funding will be used to expand engineering and enable Nubix to further capitalize on its position as a leader in edge-native application platforms.
According to Arm, there are 160 billion devices at the edge with 6.4 billion shipped in the last quarter of 2019 alone. Two-thirds of these devices are microcontrollers (MCUs) that are rigid to innovation and inherently risky to update. Nubix solves this problem with a real-time operating system (RTOS) container and services solution for MCUs, making the development and deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) and edge applications possible. Built on the premise that edge computing could rival the power of the cloud with the same agility, analytics and intelligence available on even the tiniest compute devices at the edge, Nubix empowers developers to easily analyze and take action on data being generated in real-time on a sensor device.
Institutional investors Chevron Technology Ventures, Blackhorn Ventures, Engage Ventures, Center Electric, Momenta Ventures, and Mentors Fund joined the new round, along with investment from current investor Bee Partners. A common focus for this portfolio of investors is helping early-stage technology firms commercialize their offerings by partnering with industrial-focused corporate innovators.
“Businesses worldwide are investing in digital transformation initiatives with IoT-based solutions. Our unique innovation in container and services technology enables unprecedented agility and safety when building, deploying and managing applications at the edge. We’re delivering on digital transformation’s requirements for agile compute at the edge, empowering organizations to analyze data in real-time where the data is actually created,” said Rachel Taylor, Nubix co-founder and CEO. “This is a massive market opportunity for Nubix and we look forward to working hand-in-hand with our new investors as we drive agility and intelligence to the edge.”
“Just as containers helped accelerate the move to cloud solutions through improving the security, speed of development and update process, we see the potential for Nubix’s approach to similarly transform how devices at the edge are developed and maintained. As the edge continues to expand, Nubix’s solution has the potential to become the primary way teams solve the ever-increasing complexity of maintaining and updating these devices,” noted Logan Grizzel, Blackhorn Ventures CTO.
“With a real-time monitoring system in place, we can now make ‘game-time’ decisions based on knowledge of flows and precise tank levels. This approach will reduce cost and improve measurement, accuracy and staff safety while enabling customized management of facility activities,” said Robert Fortenberry, co-founder and vice president at Surge Solutions, Inc., a Nubix customer. “We consider Nubix an integral part of our asset development strategy.”
About Nubix
Nubix tiny containers and tiny services change how businesses think about IoT development. The develop once, deploy anywhere capability and container-based deployment put the focus on building functionality, not hardware and legacy firmware issues that are barriers to IoT success. Microcontainer technology enables containerized applications to be safely distributed to devices and executed by the container runtime. The application logic can be updated and redeployed without any updates or changes to the container OS, enabling smaller, faster and less risky updates. For more information, visit nubix.io.
About Bee Partners
Bee Partners is a pre-Seed venture firm investing in exceptional Founders with unbounded potential. We write them their first check, and live their mission. At Bee Partners, we embrace the reality that machines will win at precision, complexity, and data inference. Humans will still own purpose, ingenuity, and instinct. Machines will win. Recent investments were in robotics, voice, AI, computer vision, synthetic biology, and B2B market networks, spanning healthIT, manufacturing, agriTech and supply chain, among others. With decades of experience and a portfolio of over 70 companies, Bee Partners delivers for its Founders, resulting in over 70% of our companies matriculating to a Series A from the best venture capital firms in the world. https://www.beepartners.vc/
About Tuscan Management
Tuscan is a family office with a diversified portfolio of investments across venture capital & private equity, real estate, energy infrastructure and special situations. Tuscan principally makes direct venture capital investments in companies — from seed to growth — with a focus on hardware and materials-enabled industrial technology companies. The Tuscan team has 50+ years of investing, technical, engineering, and operating experience as well as a deep network of corporate and international relationships, which it brings to its portfolio companies in support of their growth and commercialization. Tuscan currently has a portfolio of 100+ investments across its direct, special situations and partnership holdings.
About Chevron Technology Ventures
Chevron Technology Ventures (CTV) pursues and invests in externally developed technologies and new business solutions that have the potential to enhance the way Chevron produces and delivers affordable, reliable, and ever-cleaner energy. CTV leverages innovative companies and technologies to strengthen Chevron’s core operations and identifies new opportunities to shape the future of energy. The Nubix investment came from Chevron’s Core Venture Fund, which invests in technology that has the potential to add efficiencies to Chevron’s core business in the areas of operational enhancement, digitalization, and lower carbon operations. For more information, visit www.chevron.com/technology/
About Blackhorn Ventures
Blackhorn Ventures invests in companies that redefine industrial resource efficiency. Built upon scientific breakthroughs, the ICT revolution and creative thinking, these companies are rapidly transforming industrial sectors, while also achieving outsized environmental and sustainability impacts. Founded by experienced operators and investors, Blackhorn has a founder-friendly ethos, providing maximum support with minimum interference. Visit www.blackhorn.vc to learn more.
