SAN JOSE, Calif -- Aervivo, the developer of a revolutionary 5G fixed wireless connectivity platform that enables fiber-grade experiences at a fraction of the cost, announced today that it closed $3.0M in series seed financing. The round was led by Kickstart Fund, an early stage VC fund based in Salt Lake City, UT with participation from TDF Ventures, an investor in early stage infrastructure, services and software start-ups.

“We’re delighted to have two very strong partners in Kickstart and TDF join the Aervivo team,” Mike Hart, CEO and co-founder of Aervivo said. “The collective, complementary experience of their teams will be a huge benefit to us and our partners as we launch deployments of our commercially proven platform later this year.” 

Around 83.3 million Americans have no choice in broadband internet providers, according to the Institute for Local Self Reliance. While many ISPs have attempted to scale fiber and fixed wireless alternatives to existing copper and cable networks, none of the initiatives have achieved broad nationwide scale leaving consumers faced with a monopoly. Incorporating years of development, iteration and refinement, Aervivo’s commercially proven platform is uniquely positioned to empower much-needed disruption. Combining its proprietary millimeter wave mesh hardware and cloud-based software platform hosted on hyperscale datacenter technologies, Aervivo enables its ISP partners to rapidly deploy gigabit wireless networks across entire metros in months at less than 5% of fiber build costs, without compromising experience. Instead of an expensive and slow-to-market fiber deployment, Aervivo partners can now utilize Aervivo’s platform to build in a more capital efficient way, ultimately providing an affordable, competitive, fiber-grade experience to their customers. 

“We’re incredibly excited by Aervivo’s mission to democratize the role of the ISP, bringing cloud-scale technology and SaaS approaches to an industry ripe for disruption,”  said Dalton Wright, who led the Kickstart investment and will join Aervivo’s board. He continued: “Aervivo’s unique approach of creating a fully-featured B2B platform that empowers incumbents and new entrants to rapidly deploy fiber-grade, competitive experiences was compelling to us, given our focus on disrupting traditional industries through SaaS models.”

In collaboration with its strategic technology development partner and investor, Qamcom Research & Technology, Aervivo will use the funds to launch its disruptive platform-as-a-service solution, with the first commercial deployments by Aervivo’s partners bringing fiber-grade experiences across a number of US cities later this year.   

“Having worked with the Aervivo team for several years on the development of key components of the platform and seeing its capability in a commercial setting, we are extremely excited to see this technology further develop and scale nationwide,” said Johan Lassing, CEO of Qamcom. “As well as the huge opportunity to provide a new paradigm of wireless internet in the US, we see the potential for applications across many other regions of the world,” Lassing added.

Aervivo has more experience in the wireless internet industry than its early stage funding may suggest. After leaving Clearwire, Hart co-founded DFJ-backed Alpental Technologies, where he worked on advances in gigabit, millimeter wave technology. Alpental was acquired by Google in 2014, and in 2016, Hart joined Vivint where the team developed a groundbreaking fiber-grade connectivity platform. Hart joined forces with Nick Alexander to co-found Aervivo when Vivint exited the ISP space, creating the opportunity for Aervivo to acquire the technology platform that was launched to commercial success in late 2019. Several key members of the team have since joined bringing with them years of collective operations and development experience.