Huawei buys Cambridge Internet of Things pioneer Neul

Thirty-person company Neul has been bought by Huawei for a reported $25m to turn the UK into a centre of excellence for Internet of Things. The deal will have proved to be hugely profitable for the lead investors DFJ Esprit and IQ Capital as well as a long tail of smaller investors. CEO Stan Boland – whose CV includes stints …

[jamieb]

Hugely profitable - I think not

A company selling for $25m after $18.8m investment (according to Crunchbase) is pretty similar to having had the investment written off for a VC like DFJ.

The company had massive ambitions, but it seemed recently that they were struggling to deploy into whitespace hence the Weightless-N standard in ISM bands (unlicensed) announced recently. Being picked up for pocket change is unsurprising given that recent announcement.

Some big bets don't work, or don't work in time. Good on them for trying, and maybe Huawei will be able to bring it to market.

[Mookster]

It's rather niggardly to claim that anything above 0 is not success.

(Indeed, being bought, at any price, is usually a good thing for the founders)

esc, cos that's what it is...

[Chris Evans]

Whilst a profit is a prophet I doubt the VC's are smiling and the founders will I expect be disappointed given their hard work and risk they took.

Also I'm pretty certain Stan Bolland never worked for ARM.

He was MD/CEO of Acorn Computers Group When I helped negotiaite RISC OS Ltd's licence with them. Then he split off Element 14 Inc when Acorn was broken up, E14 Inc. was latter bought by Broadcom.

[Looper]

Profitable all the same...

...for an emerging technology with no proven products to market.

Considering their partnerships with Microsoft and Huawei, they are obviously on the right track.

The Weightless-W standard is still alive and being pursued as it makes far more sense than Weightless-N for the use-cases they are aiming for, in terms of energy, efficiency, speed, latency.

I would say watch this space.

Great to see this and other Chinese investment in UK R&D.