附近上门

, a Southlake, Texas-based company focused on mobile network automation and orchestration, raised $32 million in Series B funding.

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and led the investment and were joined by 1, and . Including the new round, Cellwize has raised a total of $56 million since being founded in 2013, , CEO of Cellwize, told 附近上门 News. That includes a round back in 2015, according to 附近上门 data.

Cellwize鈥檚 CHIME platform is a cloud-based, artificial intelligence-driven radio access network (RAN) that enables mobile network operators to accelerate 5G network deployment and go-to-market, as well as improve the return on investment on their network investments, Zemer said.

The company鈥檚 initial platform was a self-organizing network (SON) that enabled carriers to reconfigure their networks. In late 2016, after working with , the company asked Cellwize for automation capabilities in addition to the current optimization.

鈥淪o, we built the platform from scratch and addressed Bell Canada鈥檚 use case to 鈥榤ass densify鈥� their network without them paying hundreds of millions of dollars,鈥� Zemer said. 鈥淭wo years later, we took that new platform to Verizon and other legacy customers, saying that now the platform can do much more.鈥�

Analysts have valued the SON market at approximately $1 billion, but Zemer has a more conservative value in the low hundreds of millions. However, RAN automation is a new domain that he thinks has the potential to be that high.

Continued growth

The company has offices in Tel Aviv, Singapore, Europe and Latin America. The new funding is earmarked for several places including extending its sales and marketing reach to other mobile carriers, investing in AI, helping enterprise customers with their shift to 5G, and looking into additional lines of business, such as private networks.

Currently, Cellwize is selling to public networks. In order to move into private networks, the go-to-market is different and the value chain is more complex as it includes different players, systems and carrier sizes, Zemer said.

Due to private networks being created by company information technology people, Cellwize plans to create an offering that is more simplified and enables anyone to implement, he added.

Meanwhile, , managing director of Intel Capital, said in an interview that Intel and Cellwize have a 鈥渟hared vision鈥� about network transformation.

He said that Cellwize’s CHIME platform was attractive because it was using the cloud to increase operational efficiency. That, combined with the company鈥檚 open platform architecture, which allowed all the network elements to talk seamlessly, was proof that Cellwize and Intel shared a vision for this technology.

鈥淲e are also excited about the team,” Johnson added. “They are highly experienced, with deep telecom software and automation expertise, and we think that is how they won great customers.鈥�

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