Plume, creator of the SaaS experience platform for Communications Service Providers (CSPs) and their subscribers, has closed a $270 million (€222.40 million) minority investment from global venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners. This Series E round at a $1.35 billion (€1.11 billion)valuation brings Plume’s total equity funding to $397 million (€327.01 million). 

Plume was founded on the premise that a device will only ever be as smart as the network it’s connected to, and that the existing smart home services were sorely lacking. Instead of attempting to improve only wireless coverage through distributed hardware, Plume’s approach is entirely different a comprehensive suite of cloud-controlled front-end services delivered over a smart, software-defined network.

The company’s HomePass front-end services suite consists of adaptive and self-optimising whole-home WiFi, artificial intelligence (AI) driven cybersecurity and Internet of Things (IoT) device protection, sophisticated parental supervision, secure access controls, and motion awareness.

HomePass is complemented by a powerful, data-driven back-end operations platform offering real-time and predictive customer support tools, network control centre applications, deep analytics, comprehensive dashboards, consumer behaviour and satisfaction insights, churn prediction, and retention marketing services for CSPs through Plume’s Haystack and Harvest suites.

Plume will use the funding to increase investment in research & development and lean more aggressively into sales, marketing, and partnerships. The company will seek to continue its rapid product, revenue, customer, channel, and geographic expansion and plans to add employees in all of its offices across North America, Europe, and Asia.

“Growth in the smart home category is exploding, but the quality of consumer experience has fallen short,” says Insight Partners managing director, Ryan Hinkle, who has been appointed as a director on Plume’s board. “We are convinced that Plume, with its scalable cloud data platform approach, highly efficient go-to-market strategy, strong momentum, top-quartile financial performance across all SaaS KPIs including revenue, growth rates, gross margin, efficiency and retention metrics and world class team is transforming this category. We’re delighted to join and support this exciting journey.”

Customers benefit from Plume’s constantly expanding platform through OpenSync, the widely supported open-source, silicon-to-cloud framework for smart spaces. With OpenSync, CSPs can decouple their service offerings from hardware and rapidly curate and deliver new services over a multi-vendor, open-platform architecture.

Managed by a massively scalable cloud control plane, new services can often be delivered without requiring new equipment, reducing CAPEX spend and extending the useful life of existing infrastructure. Since its creation in 2018, OpenSync has grown to power more than 26 million access points and switches across a broad range of silicon SDK and CPE platforms, and has attracted many third-party developers and contributors.

“We could not be more enthusiastic about welcoming Ryan to our board, and our partnership with the entire Insight team,” says Fahri Diner, co-founder and CEO of Plume. “By leveraging machine learning and AI, cloud data, open-source, deep ecosystem partnerships, and a scalable platform, we uniquely address the disconnect between the expectations of smart spaces and the service provider’s ability to deliver flawless experiences to them while building a leading, high-growth SaaS business in a large, under-served market.

An even stronger balance sheet through this cash infusion, coupled with our high operating leverage, sets the stage for Plume to continue to invest confidently in our future.” Jefferies acted as financial advisor to Plume on the transaction.

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