According to TechCrunch, the French IoT startup Sigfox has filed for bankruptcy protection in France and is seeking a buyer. The online new portal claims it has received a statement from the company stating that slow sales of its products and challenging conditions in the IoT industry due to COVID-19 were the reason for the step. The statement also noted that business was being impacted by a shortage in electronic components.
Sigfox runs a global IoT GPS network which forms the basis for its industrial tracking solution for trailers, containers, boxes, stillages, rental machinery. Simple and reliable asset tracking system for industrial equipment. According to the company website, Sigfox operated a network that spans 75 countries, stitching together capacity from 75 carriers, and that it connects 20 million objects and sends 80 million messages per day. Sigfox has raised more than $300 million from a group of high-profile investors that included Salesforce, Intel, Samsung, NTT, SK Telecom, energy groups Total and Air Liquide, and many others. A profile of the company on VentureBeat described it as a “unicorn” — that is, valued at over $1 billion. According to Sigfox’s statement, the receivership/rehabilitation proceeding was opened in the Commercial Court of Toulouse at the request of the CEO Jeremy Prince, and it pertains both to Sigfox and its French subsidiary Sigfox France. Prince was appointed to the position when Sigfox’s co-founder, Ludovic Le Moan, stepped down as CEO of the company after more than a decade in March 2021. Rumors of financial difficulties for Sigfox had been spreading during the past months. The French publication French Tech Journal had reported in September that auditors for the company had warned management that the company had to raise funding by the end of the year to avoid insolvency. The journal described the recent events as “Sigfox’s implosion”. Public account filings for the company note that in the last financial year, the company posted a net loss of nearly €91 million on revenues of just over €24 million, and financial debts of €118 million. Sigfox was considered a poster child for the European IoT sector and a pioneer startup with a robust business model. Its claim was not just that it was building an IoT network, but that it was going to do so on a new kind of concept for harnessing power, making its networks, and the devices connected to it, considerably more sustainable and efficient.
Author: Tim Cole
Image Credit: Sigfox
Source: https://www.smart-industry.net/sigfox-implodes-seeks-bankruptcy-protection/
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