With Softbank’s Vision Fund 2 backing, Wiliot will accelerate its mission to create a new era of IoT where intelligence and connectivity are brought to trillions of products that move through global supply chains – from crates, packaging, and pallets to clothes, medicine, and perishable goods.

SAN DIEGO, US – Media OutReach – 27 July 2021 – Wiliot, the Sensing as a Service company and Internet of Things (IoT) technology leader whose self-powered, stamp-sized computer is changing the relationship between manufactures and their products, announced today it received $200 million in a Series C funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2[i] (“Softbank”).

Wiliot has created a platform that is built on Wiliot IoT Pixels and the Wiliot Cloud. Wiliot IoT Pixels are tiny low-cost, self-powered tags that attach to any product or packaging to sense a range of physical and environment data that is then fed into the Wiliot Cloud, where machine learning algorithms translate data into actionable insights for businesses across a range of industries. The Wiliot Cloud also ensures data remains secure, private, and authentic.

For decades, there has remained a massive gap as trillions of products travel billions of miles without any data being available as to their status, whereabouts, or situation. Lacking this information, global supply chains have been profoundly, and vulnerably, in the dark. Recognizing this, many leaders in consumer-packaged goods, pharmaceuticals, furniture, and apparel have been working with Wiliot to add their sensing capabilities, intelligence and connectivity.

Effectively, products that were off-line during their manufacturing, shipping and consumption journeys are now online, a reality that is changing the way products are made, distributed, sold, used, reused, and recycled.

Wiliot-enabled products and packaging can sense temperature, fill level, motion, location changes, humidity, and proximity. Wiliot IoT Pixels can be integrated into vaccine vials, food packaging, and more, bringing real-time transparency to the supply chain, and the ability for brands for the first time to understand inventory levels throughout their retail channels. They can even understand how their products are used in customers’ homes through a highly secure, privacy-protected platform.

This omniscient view of the supply chain built on people’s usage allows a new paradigm called Demand Chain, which promises to slash the required capital that’s non-productively tied up in inventories. Products will be able to self-reorder based on usage, accelerating the adoption of the “subscription economy” as brands transform their business models. 

Specifically for Taiwan, manufacturers have been searching for technologies that can help improve supply chain management for years. Coupled with the recent announcement made by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen in April 2021 that Taiwan is actively working towards carbon neutrality by 2050, enterprises are in eager search of IoT solutions to enable the transformation. Meanwhile, the need to keep stock for vaccination needs also encourages surging demand from the medical sector. Upgrades on post-COVID supply chain management has become a crucial topic within Taiwan.

All this will provide consumers with increased convenience, fresher, safer food, less waste, lower medical costs and a lower environmental impact.

“Wiliot has created a vision of the future of AI-enabled IoT, and we are delighted that SoftBank is supporting us in making this future a reality,” said Tal Tamir, Wiliot’s CEO. “IoT is a vision created around Things and our mission at Wiliot is to use cutting edge hardware, AI based sensing and an innovative business model to implement a safer and more transparent world, a world in which all the things around us help consumers use them better and suppliers avoid waste.”  

“By inventing the first hyper-scalable, self-powered computer that uses AI to sense the world, Wiliot is positioned to bring together the digital and physical” said Yanni Pipilis Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. “We have always believed that with IoT and AI, people will live better and healthier lives – where any food or medicine has the ability to understand if it’s safe to use and communicate seamlessly with people. We are pleased to play a part in helping Wiliot dramatically scale the ever-expanding application of IoT globally.”

Softbank joins existing investors that include 83North, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), Avery Dennison, Grove Ventures, M Ventures, the corporate VC of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, Maersk Growth, Norwest Venture Partners, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures LLC, Samsung Venture Investment Corp., Vintage Investment Partners, and Verizon Ventures. As part of the investment, Amit Lubovsky, Investor for SoftBank Investment Advisers, will join Wiliot’s Board of Directors.

Wiliot will use the latest round of capital to grow its team and scale its channels for the forthcoming launch of its V2 product, which offers next-generation performance that will help accelerate its vision for a new IoT.

For more information and additional media assets go to www.wiliot.com/press.

About Wiliot

Wiliot is a Sensing as a Service company whose cloud platform connects the digital and physical worlds using its IoT Pixel tagging technology, computers the size of a postage stamp that power themselves in revolutionary ways. Our vision is to expand the Internet of things to include everyday products, adding intelligence to plastic crates, pharmaceuticals, packaging, clothes, and other products, connecting them to the internet, changing the way things are made, distributed, sold, used, reused, and recycled. wiliot.com

#Wiliot

About 83North

83North is a global venture capital firm. The fund invests across all stages, in exceptional entrepreneurs, whose focus is to build global category leading companies. For more information visit www.83north.com and follow us on Twitter @83NorthVC.

About Avery Dennison

Avery Dennison Corporation (NYSE: AVY) is a global materials science company specializing in the design and manufacture of a wide variety of labeling and functional materials. The company’s products, which are used in nearly every major industry, include pressure-sensitive materials for labels and graphic applications; tapes and other bonding solutions for industrial, medical, and retail applications; tags, labels and embellishments for apparel; and radio frequency identification (RFID) solutions serving retail apparel and other markets. Headquartered in Glendale, California, the company employs more than 32,000 employees in more than 50 countries. Reported sales in 2020 were $7.0 billion. Learn more at www.averydennison.com.

About Grove Ventures

Grove Ventures is an early-stage venture capital investment firm which places significant emphasis on deep technology and partners with exceptional Israeli entrepreneurs. With a quarter-billion dollars under management across two funds, Grove invests in leading startups developing hard-to-replicate solutions at the intersection of technology, science and applicable market needs. Its investment thesis is based on the premise that IoT, AI and Cloud Computing create a new set of investment opportunities in multiple sectors, including semiconductors, Industry 4.0, digital health and cloud infrastructure, among others. The fund’s core principles are putting people first, close cooperation and value-creation. Grove’s team, built of experienced investors, veteran entrepreneurs, and company builders, provides startups with the needed support to become great companies. For more information, visit: www.grovevc.com

About M Ventures

M Ventures is the strategic, corporate venture capital arm of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. Its mandate is to invest in innovative technologies and products with the potential to significantly impact the company’s core business areas. From its headquarters in Amsterdam and offices in the US and Israel, M Ventures invests globally in transformational ideas driven by great entrepreneurs. M Ventures takes an active role in its portfolio companies and teams up with entrepreneurs and co-investors to translate innovation towards commercial success. M Ventures has a significant focus on early stage investing and company creation including the creation of spin-offs to leverage the company’s science and technology base. For more information, visit www.m-ventures.com.

About Maersk Growth

Maersk Growth is the corporate venture arm of A.P. Moller – Maersk. Maersk Growth is investing and accelerating growth businesses to shape the future of trade, drive transformation in the logistics industry and support Maersk’s corporate vision of delivering seamless, end-to-end logistics services. For more information, please visit growth.maersk.com

About Norwest Venture Partners

Norwest is a leading growth equity and venture investment firm managing more than $7.5 billion in capital. Since our inception, we have invested in more than 600 companies. The firm invests in early to late stage companies across a wide range of sectors with a focus on consumer, enterprise, and healthcare. We offer a deep network of connections, operating experience, and a wide range of impactful services to help CEOs and founders advance on their journey. Norwest has offices in Palo Alto and San Francisco, with subsidiaries in India and Israel. For more information, please visit Norwest. Follow Norwest on Twitter @NorwestVP.

About Qualcomm Ventures

Qualcomm Ventures, acting through Qualcomm Ventures LLC or its affiliated entities, has been making strategic investments in technology companies that have the potential to dramatically transform our world since 2000. As a global investor, we look to help entrepreneurs build revolutionary businesses that reshape the world around us. For more information please visit: www.qualcommventures.com

About NTT DOCOMO Ventures

NTT DOCOMO Ventures, the NTT Group’s corporate venture capital firm, aims to accelerate innovation for creation of new services, disruptive technologies and innovative processes serving as a primary channel for startup companies and venture communities on behalf of the NTT Group, Japan’s leading ICT service provider. We proactively enhance cooperation with exceptional entrepreneurs on a worldwide scale by providing capital from our corporate venture funds and vast business development opportunities with the NTT Group companies. For more information please visit:

http://www.nttdocomo-v.com/en/

About Verizon

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, Nasdaq: VZ) was formed on June 30, 2000 and is one of the world’s leading providers of technology, communications, information and entertainment products and services. Headquartered in New York City and with a presence around the world, Verizon generated revenues of $128.3 billion in 2020. The company offers data, video and voice services and solutions on its award-winning networks and platforms, delivering on customers’ demand for mobility, reliable network connectivity, security and control.

About Vintage

Vintage Investment Partners is a global venture platform managing $2.4 billion across venture Fund of Funds, Secondary Funds and Growth-stage Co-investment Funds focused on venture in the U.S., Europe, Israel and Canada. The firm is invested in the world’s leading venture funds and growth stage tech startups striving to make a lasting impact on the world, and has exposure directly and indirectly to over 2,250 technology companies. Vintage leverages its unmatched network, and a database of over 10,000 companies to provide the Value-Added Services (VAS), a free-of-charge service, connecting venture-backed technology startups to corporations seeking innovation. VAS has a proven model that has so far helped generate over 200 POs and POCs globally exceeding $100 million in revenues for its startups. To learn more about Vintage visit: https://www.vintage-ip.com/about/; Social Media: LinkedIn; Twitter

CAIRO, EGYPT – EQS Newswire – 27 July 2021 – EVA Pharma’s (www.EVAPharma.com) timely shipments of Remdesivir reached India during a major wave of coronavirus cases.

When India experienced an unexpected COVID-19 surge this spring, the rapid increase in cases put pressure on the local pharmaceutical industry to supply the medicines needed. In April, EVA Pharma signed a contract with the Indian government to export 300,000 vials of Remdesivir, an approved treatment for coronavirus, to meet the urgent needs there.

Six shipments of Remdesivir were flown to Mumbai between May and June and were subsequently dispatched to hospitals across India, reaching patients everywhere from major cities to the remote archipelago of Lakshadweep.

“I’m glad to say that the six consignments in which the Remdesivir was dispatched to India were not only sent on schedule but in all cases before the schedule,” commented Ambassador Ajit Gupte, India’s envoy to Egypt. “This was a period when the caseload was very high in India, and the shipments would have helped to save a lot of lives.” 

EVA Pharma is the only company in the Middle East or Africa that has been granted a voluntary license to produce and distribute Remdesivir by Gilead Sciences, Inc, the owner of the molecule. The production lines at the EVA Pharma facility in Haram, Cairo, are certified by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), enabling the company to export its products globally. 

COVID-19 cases in India have since declined, reducing the immediate pressure on local health systems and supply lines. Cases in other countries have gone up in recent months, however, especially due to the spread of the Delta variant. As a result, EVA Pharma has increased its exports of Remdesivir to other Asian countries such as Indonesia.

“We are proud to support COVID-19 efforts both in Egypt and around the world by manufacturing Remdesivir at our world-class manufacturing facility in Cairo,” said Dr. Riad Armanious, CEO of EVA Pharma. “With our monthly production of Remdesivir now amounting to 1.5 million doses, we are able to meet the local needs of Egyptian patients while also helping other countries tackle this crisis. In fact, we now supply more than 20 countries around the world with Remdesivir.”

The success of the cooperation between EVA Pharma and India highlights the potential for further fruitful collaboration between emerging economies, especially during times of need.

“As developing countries, what I can say is India and Egypt face similar challenges,” said Ambassador Gupte. “One of the challenges we face is how we can provide affordable health care to our millions of people because we are populous countries. Cost is important. So I think the closer the cooperation between India and Egypt, the more we will be able to help provide basic needs for the people of our countries.” 

About EVA Pharma

EVA Pharma, one of the major multinational pharmaceutical companies headquartering in Cairo, Egypt while operating in more than 40 countries and one of the fastest-growing pharmaceutical companies in the MENA region. The company has partnerships with some of the leading international pharmaceutical names the world over and has a presence in 41 countries throughout the region. With a 3,000-strong team of some of the region’s most competent pharmaceutical professionals, EVA Pharma produces an average of 350,000 packs of more than 185 different drugs daily. Its state-of-the-art facilities are equipped with cutting-edge technology and are internationally recognized for innovation and the highest international quality standards.

To learn more about EVA Pharma, please visit: www.EVAPharma.com

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HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 27 July 2021 – Cyberport Academy will host a Green Finance Speaker Series to promote green finance in Hong Kong with FinTech support in light of the rise of green finance. Cyberport believes that FinTech can empower the development of green finance and is committed to playing a role in promoting green FinTech to strengthen Hong Kong as an international financial centre.

Eric Chan, Chief Public Mission Officer of Cyberport, says Cyberport has a good number of community members focused on green FinTech and will play a key role in promoting Hong Kong as a leading green FinTech Hub.

The Green Finance Speaker Series will be launched this Thursday (29 July). Two other sessions are scheduled on 12 and 19 August. It strives to provide the latest knowledge of green finance development, with each session covering various topics from the historic development of international policies and recent developments in Asia and Hong Kong during the Pandemic to recognised successful European case studies with the integration of technology. The details of the Series are as follows:

• The first session “Green Finance: Overview – The Best Practice, International Policy and Measures” will be chaired by Dr William Yu, CEO of World Green Organisation
• The second session “Sustainability-related financial risks in Hong Kong and Asia amid Pandemic Era” will be chaired by Dr Glenn Frommer, Founder of ESG Matters
• The third session “See a Problem, Measure It and Fix It” will be chaired by Arnaud Picut, Head of Global Risk Management Practice at Finastra, and Dr Leonid Bogachev, Associate Professor of Reader in Probability at the University of Leeds

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD) estimates that as much as US$7 trillion will be needed each year until 2030 to meet climate and development objectives. This creates huge demand for green finance. Additionally, according to the “Hong Kong Green Bond Market Briefing 2020” report issued by Climate Bonds Initiatives, Hong Kong’s green debt market maintained growth in size and diversity last year. Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited also continues to enhance the ESG requirements of listing companies while investors are increasingly more demanding in investments to perform well in environmentalism and sustainability. With FinTech’s role in propelling green finance, FinTech will be significant in such developments as well.

Eric Chan, Chief Public Mission Officer of Cyberport, said,”When financial investments flow into sustainable development projects and initiatives, environmental products, and policies that encourage the development of a more sustainable economy, the market requires efficient tools for collecting, monitoring and analysing data for better investment decisions. FinTech delivers such solutions. Cyberport has a good number of community members focused on green FinTech and will play a key role in promoting Hong Kong as a leading and green FinTech hub.”

Cyberport is a member of the Working Groups under the newly established Centre for Green and Sustainable Finance by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority-led Green and Sustainable Finance Cross-Agency Steering Group. With the objective of helping the financial industry manage the risks and capture the opportunities presented by combating climate change, the Centre is a cross-sector platform which coordinates the efforts of financial regulators, Government agencies, industry stakeholders and academia in capacity building, thought leadership and policy development. It will also serve as a repository for resources, data and analytics which supports the transition to more sustainable development.

Arnaud Picut, Head of Global Risk Management Practice at Finastra, said, “There will be no progress in green finance without a strong FinTech community. Cyberport is making a lot of progress and has taken green finance as one of the major streams of development. With a strong investment and focus from different government bodies, Hong Kong will catch up quickly with the leader. Financial institutions can employ FinTech within green finance operations to better analyze costs and efficiency and increase data authenticity.”

Dr William Yu, Chief Executive Officer of World Green Organization, said, “Green finance helps provide funds to address different environmental challenges, turning them into investment opportunities via structural financial activities and instruments. With the advancement in technology experienced in FinTech, technology will play a key role in shaping our future financial services. For example, blockchain applications will enhance transparency in sustainability efforts, creating reliable records in environmental projects. UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) could also be a reference, and serves as a universal agenda that applies to all countries at the national and local level.”

Dr Glenn Frommer, Founder of ESG Matters, a Cyberport incubatee, said, “With green finance growing rapidly, its potential as the next frontier in the FinTech ecosystem is unquestionable. FinTech is a critical enabler for green finance, starting with the mass of ESG data needed to be considered for financial investments. We are hopeful that ESG data quality and availability will improve. With the continued growth of green and sustainable finance, we will likely see further development of the green FinTech landscape globally.”

Registration for the event can be completed through Cyberport Academy’s website five days in advance at the latest. The sessions will be free and have duration of 1–1.5 hours. Any enquiries should be directed towards training@cyberport.hk.

For high resolution photos, please download via this link.

About Cyberport

Cyberport is an innovative digital community with over 1,650 start-ups and technology companies. It is managed by Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited, which is wholly owned by the Hong Kong SAR Government. With a vision to be the hub for digital technology thereby creating a new economic driver for Hong Kong, Cyberport is committed to nurturing a vibrant tech ecosystem by cultivating talent, promoting entrepreneurship among youth, supporting start-ups on their growth journey, fostering industry development by promoting strategic collaboration with local and international partners, and integrating new and traditional economies by accelerating digital transformation in the public and private sectors.

For more information, please visit www.cyberport.hk.

#Cyberport