Freescale‘s newest chip is as thin as a blade of grass.
Targeted at Internet of Things applications, which are expected to become a $1.7 trillion market by 2020, the Kinetis K22 microcontroller from Freescale is just 0.34 millimeters in height. But it packs a 120-megahertz processor and a variety of memories and interfaces into a tiny little package for Internet of Things applications.
Internet of Things startups have attracted over $7.4B in cumulative investment over 887 deals since 2010. As the IoT continues to transform business categories such as auto, medicine, and heavy manufacturing, it’s important to know where to top VCs are placing their bets.
(For more on how we selected our top 20 VCs, see the note at the end of this post.)
The Internet of Things stands as one of the largest economic opportunities in the world. But it’s not just about consumer devices. Some of the biggest breakthroughs are taking place behind the scenes in factories, farms, and industrial sites to optimize production or increase energy efficiency.
In these early days of the Internet of Things (IoT), much of the focus has been on industrial applications, such as improving operations with autonomous machines, or standalone consumer products, like a Fitbit. But from our research, we’re seeing a more human-centric category of IoT activity starting to emerge. It’s less about automation and more about personal augmentation; less about individual devices and more about “living services” that let people program and connect smart devices however they want.
Intelligent software provider for commercial offices Building Robotics is extending the functionality of its workplace Internet of Things offering, Comfy. Starting today, third-party services like CommScope, Intel, Lutron, and View can be integrated into a new version, +Comfy, that allows workers to adjust the temperature, lighting, windows, and more through Comfy’s app or a web interface.
PubNub, the startup that has built a data network that carries messaging for apps, IoT hardware and other low-latency services, is today announcing that it has extended and closed its Series C round. The San Francisco-based company has raised $25 million, funding that it will use to sharpen its focus on Internet of Things applications and hardware as well as clean energy and social collaboration.
The Things Network is helping to build free city-wide internet in Amsterdam, without the use of wifi or 3G.
A world where internet access is free for all, where an Internet of Things is networked by the users, for the users. Is it possible? In Amsterdam, it’s already happened. The Things Network (TTN) is planning to build a global open crowdsourced Internet of Things data network, and work is well underway.
Last November, Sony Pictures was the subject of a massive hack that brought its operations to an abrupt standstill. Subsequently, (after much back and forth with the attackers) a swath of its internal data, emails, and personal information was leaked all over the Internet.
Though the leak itself was highly damaging for Sony, so was the hijacking of its network. Sony didn’t have a backup of its data, and that failure allowed hackers to hold the company hostage.
The importance of data in delivering efficient, effective health care has long been obvious—and has never been greater. The increased focus on value-based care is shifting financial incentives to a model in which providers are compensated based on how their patients fare, rather than by the number of tests, visits, or procedures performed. This means that providers, patients, and everyone in between are more eager than ever to measure patient outcomes in order to determine what works and who gets paid.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is dramatically accelerating the pace of innovation in the transportation industry—especially the cars and trucks we drive every day. And when you apply the laws that have been driving technology innovation for decades—Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law—it’s not long before our automobiles will resemble smart devices on wheels and your vehicle may very well be the most expensive computing device you own.
