Insight Ventures: $270 million in new capital for Plume, market value over 1.35 billion

Palo Alto — Plume®, the company behind the smart home service offe­rings of more than 170 inter­net service provi­ders (CSPs) in over 22 million homes world­wide, today announ­ced the closing of a $270 million mino­rity invest­ment by global venture capi­tal and private equity firm Insight Part­ners. This Series E finan­cing round brings the $1.35 billion valued company’s equity finan­cing to a total of $397 million.

Plume was foun­ded on the premise that a device is only as smart as the network it is connec­ted to. In this respect, the exis­ting smart home services show clear defi­cits. Plume’s goal is not just to improve WLAN coverage through decen­tra­li­zed hard­ware, but to rely on an enti­rely diffe­rent solu­tion: a compre­hen­sive set of cloud-driven front-end services deli­vered over an intel­li­gent, soft­­ware-defi­­ned network. The Plume Home­Pass™ front-end services suite provi­des adap­tive and self-opti­­mi­­zing Wi-Fi throug­hout the home, AI-driven cyber­se­cu­rity and protec­tion for IoT devices, sophisti­ca­ted paren­tal controls, and secure access control and motion detec­tion. Comple­men­ting Home­Pass is a powerful, data-driven back-end opera­ti­ons plat­form that provi­des nume­rous useful tools through Plume’s Haystack™ and Harvest™ suites: for real-time custo­mer support that is also predic­tive, network control center appli­ca­ti­ons, detailed analy­tics, compre­hen­sive dash­boards, custo­mer beha­vior and satis­fac­tion insights, churn fore­cas­ting, and reten­tion marke­ting services for CSPs.

Plume will use the funding to inten­sify its invest­ment in rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment and increase its focus on sales, marke­ting and part­ner­ships. The company also plans to conti­nue its rapid deve­lo­p­ment in the areas of products, sales, custo­mers, distri­bu­tion chan­nels and geogra­phic expan­sion, hiring new employees in all loca­ti­ons in North America, Europe and Asia.

“The market for smart home products is lite­rally explo­ding, but the custo­mer expe­ri­ence often falls by the wayside,” said Ryan Hinkle, mana­ging direc­tor of Insight Part­ners, who joined Plume’s board of direc­tors. “We believe Plume’s scalable cloud data plat­form, highly effi­ci­ent go-to-market stra­tegy, strong deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial, best-in-class finan­cial perfor­mance across all SaaS KPIs — inclu­ding reve­nue, growth rates, gross margin, and effi­ci­ency and reten­tion metrics — and world-class team will open up enti­rely new hori­zons in this space. We are plea­sed to be able to accom­pany and support this exci­ting journey.”

Custo­mers bene­fit from the ever-expan­­ding Plume plat­form through Open­Sync™, the most widely supported open source sili­­con-to-cloud frame­work for smart spaces. With Open­Sync, CSPs can offer their services in a hard­­ware-inde­­pen­­dent manner and quickly curate and deploy new services using a vendor-neutral, open-plat­­form archi­tec­ture. Mana­ged through a highly scalable cloud control plane, new services can be deployed mostly without new equip­ment, redu­cing capi­tal expen­dit­ures and exten­ding the useful life of exis­ting infra­struc­ture. Since its incep­tion in 2018, Open­Sync has been active on more than 26 million access points and swit­ches across a wide range of chip­set and device plat­forms, and has attrac­ted many exter­nal deve­lo­pers and supporters.

“We are exci­ted to welcome Ryan Hinkle to our board and look forward to working with the entire Insight team,” said Fahri Diner, co-foun­­der and CEO of Plume. “Using machine lear­ning and AI, cloud data, open source, close ecosys­tem part­ner­ships, and a scalable plat­form, we are uniquely bridging the gap between the expec­ta­ti­ons of smart spaces and the ability of service provi­ders to deli­ver perfect expe­ri­en­ces — while buil­ding a leading, high-growth SaaS busi­ness in a large, under­ser­ved market. Our streng­the­ned finan­cial resour­ces from this invest­ment, coupled with our opera­tio­nal scale advan­tage, set the stage for Plume to conti­nue to invest confi­dently in its future.”

Jeffe­ries acted as finan­cial advi­sor to Plume in the transaction.

About Plume

Plume® has deve­lo­ped the world’s first globally deployed SaaS expe­ri­ence plat­form for commu­ni­ca­ti­ons service provi­ders (CSPs) and their subscri­bers. As the only open and hard­­ware-inde­­pen­­dent solu­tion, Plume enables rapid deploy­ment of new services to connec­ted homes (and beyond) at scale. Custo­mers bene­fit from self-opti­­mi­­zing WLAN, cyber­se­cu­rity, access controls, paren­tal controls, motion detec­tion and much more. CSPs get relia­ble back-end appli­ca­ti­ons that provide unpre­ce­den­ted visi­bi­lity and both reac­tive and preven­ta­tive support. Plume lever­a­ges Open­Sync™, an open source frame­work pre-inte­­gra­­ted on and supported by the leading chip­set, CPE and plat­form SDKs.

Plume’s inves­tors include Char­ter Commu­ni­ca­ti­ons, Comcast Cable, Foxconn, Insight Part­ners, Jack­son Square Ventures, Liberty Global Ventures, Presi­dio Ventures, Qual­comm, Samsung, Service Elec­tric Cable­vi­sion, Shaw Ventures, Sili­con Valley Bank and UpBeat Venture Part­ners. www.plume.com, www.plume.com/homepass, andwww.opensync.io.

Plume, Home­Pass, Haystack, Harvest and Open­Sync are trade­marks or regis­tered trade­marks of Plume Design, Inc.

About Insight Partners

Insight Part­ners is a leading global venture capi­tal and private equity firm that invests in high-growth tech­no­logy and soft­ware scale-up compa­nies driving disrup­tive change in their indus­tries. Since its foun­ding in 1995, Insight Part­ners has inves­ted in more than 400 compa­nies world­wide and raised more than $30 billion in invest­ment capi­tal through a series of funds. Insight’s goal is to find, fund and successfully part­ner with visio­nary entre­pre­neurs by provi­ding them with prac­ti­cal, real-world soft­ware exper­tise to enable long-term success. Through its people and port­fo­lio, Insight fosters a culture based on the belief that ScaleUp compa­nies and growth create oppor­tu­ni­ties for all. www.insightpartners.com