Australia's Morse Micro gets $95m Series B

The round was led by Japan-listed semiconductor company MegaChips Corporation and featured existing investors Blackbird Ventures, Main Sequence Ventures, Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Skip Capital, Uniseed, and SpringCapital. Malcolm Turnbull, the former Australian prime minister, and his wife Lucy also participated.

Morse Micro was founded in 2016 and Main Sequence provided seed funding the following year. This was followed by a AUD 24m Series A in 2019 featuring Blackbird, CEFC, Right Click Capital, Skip, and Uniseed, and a supplementary USD 13m in 2020 from Blackbird, CEFC, Main Sequence, and Skip, according to AVCJ Research’s records.

Main Sequence first invested through a fund it manages for CSIRO, an Australian government research unit. Uniseed is a fund launched by CSIRO in conjunction with a group of local universities, while CEFC is a government-backed investor focused on energy transition.

Sydney-based Morse Micro produces system-on-chips (SOCs) and modules for Wi-Fi HaLow, which claims to be the first Wi-Fi standard tailored to meet the needs of the IoT. Wi-Fi HaLow operates at 10x the range of mainstream wireless networks, penetrates walls and other obstacles more easily by using lower frequencies, and consumes limited power, so IoT devices can run on batteries for years.

The company was established by Michael De Nil and Andrew Terry, who subsequently joined forces with Neil Weste, designer of the chipset for IEEE 802.11a wireless LAN, the original Wi-Fi standard.

Morse Micro has offices in Australia, China, India, the UK, and the US. It will use the new funding to deepen its product offering and accelerate its go-to-market strategy. The MegaChips investment also comes with a partnership that will see the Japanese company manufacture and distribute Morse Micro’s semiconductors and modules.

“With MegaChips’ financial backing and robust manufacturing and sales support, Morse Micro will be poised to achieve our goal of revolutionising IoT connectivity with our growing portfolio of Wi-Fi HaLow SoCs, modules, software and development tools,” said De Nil in a statement.

“With growing market traction for Wi-Fi HaLow-compliant solutions in the IoT ecosystem, we’re at an exciting inflection point. MegaChips shares our vision to revolutionise connectivity and build enduring Wi-Fi HaLow solutions for the future.”

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Early-stage
• Technology
• Australia
• Blackbird Ventures
• Main Sequence Ventures
• Skip Capital
• semiconductor