China cloud IoT provider Tuya files for US IPO

New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is the largest shareholder with 23.9%. The two founders Xueji Wang and Liaohan Chen respectively hold 22% and 5.6%. Tencent Holdings is the second largest external shareholder with 10.8%.

NEA led a $114 million Series C round in 2018 featuring China Broadband Capital, Paris-based late-stage tech investor Quadrille Capital and Australia’s Future Fund, according to a prospectus. Tencent invested $169 million in the Series D in 2019 and put in another $79.9 million in a pre-IPO round in February. Earlier investors include China International Capital Corporation and Oriental Fortune Capital

Founded in 2014, Tuya seeks to integrate devices under different brands into a single platform serving a range of industry verticals, such as smart home, smart business, healthcare, education and agriculture.

For example, in the smart home space, TVs, lights and other appliances of different brands can all be controlled through Tuya. Tuya also has industry SaaS offerings such as a smart hotel service that allows hotel managers to monitor different aspects of hotel services including housekeeping, guest traffic control, property surveillance and maintenance from a single control point.

Tuya had over 5,000 customers in 2020 including brands, original equipment manufacturers, industry operators and system integrators. Its IoT PaaS empowered over 2,700 brands to develop their smart devices, including Calex, Philips and Schneider Electric.

In 2020, the company powered over 116.5 million smart devices, becoming the largest IoT PaaS business in the global market, according to CIC. As of the end of 2020, there were approximately 204.3 million smart devices powered by Tuya and the company was used by over 262,000 IoT device and software developers. Tuya is said to be capable of processing over 84 billion cloud requests and 122 million voice interactions daily.

The IoT PaaS is the main source of income, representing 72% and 84% of revenue in 2019 and 2020, respectively. The company grew 181% in the past yea,r with premium customers contributing 87% of revenues. Tuya has 188 premium IoT PaaS customers, individually contributing more than $100,000 annually.

Tuya recorded a revenue of $179.9 million in 2020, up 70% from 2019. The company generated net losses of $70.5 million and $66.9 million in 2019 and 2020, respectively. The worldwide IoT PaaS total addressable market is forecast grow from $72.2 billion in 2019 to $171.7 billion by 2024. China represented 26.2% and 28.9% of this market in 2019 and 2024. respectively.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• IPO
• Technology
• China
• artificial intelligence
• Tencent