Japan’s KDDI to buy IoT-optimized mobile data startup Soracom for $180 million

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The Nikkei reported early this morning that Japan’s second largest telco KDDI will acquire a full stake in Tokyo-based Soracom, a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) startup offering data service optimized for IoT (Internet of Things). The acquisition price is reportedly about 20 billion yen ($180 million US). Founded in 2014 by former Amazon Web Services engineer Ken Tamagawa, the mobile company has now become a 40-people team serving about 7,000 businesses in Japan as well as around 800 companies in the US and Europe.

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KDDI started working on IoT-optimized services last year including several efforts like a massive partnership with Toyota for serving connected cars. In February of this year the Japanese telco acquired Iret, the Japanese startup behind cloud-based solution suite Cloudpack, while the former also announced in March that it would jointly set up a new company called ARISE Analytics with Accenture, aiming to promote data analytics businesses.

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