Private 5G connectivity provider Firecell today announced that the company raised €6.6 million ($7.2 million) in a seed round led by Ventech and Matterwave Ventures to develop a range of 5G solutions to power industrial smart applications.

Bpifrance’s Digital Venture fund and Bouygues Telecom Initiative also joined the funding round.

Founded in 2021, Firecell provides what it says are lower-cost and user-friendly private 5G installations for enterprise and industrial complexes that require wireless connectivity. The company said that its solutions provide better communication capabilities that outperform WiFi with more robust connectivity for large, complex spaces, with a simple 5G setup that can speed up returns on cost and efficiency.

The company, which operates in about 20 countries, has signed up 75 clients, including SNCF, Airbus, Thales, Fives, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Department of Energy, ID Logistics, Campus Schwarzwald and Team Henri Fabre.

Firecell’s solution allows for a complex or campus of over 30,000 square meters to be covered in full 5G with fewer than five access points. That means warehouses, logistics centers, call centers, campuses and more can be quickly and easily set up with less infrastructure. The company said its platform also ensures security with native communication encryption compatibility with modern industrial systems.

“This fundraising will allow us to accelerate our deployment and offer industrial enterprises cutting-edge connectivity to meet their growing communication and data management needs,” said Claude Seyrat, co-founder and chief executive of Firecell.

The company said that although industrial digitization is currently underway, only 3% of communications in French factories are wireless. The development and use of 5G have been paving the way for a greater level of connectivity with machines and devices using telemetry through the internet of things, where every machine can be instrumented for the so-called “industrial metaverse.” Customers can use data from their factories and machines to simulate their factories and warehouses in the cloud for digital twins, but first they need mobile data networks capable of carrying the information to support these simulations.

Other factories have begun to employ autonomous drones and robots internally and vehicles around their campuses. The enhanced bandwidth and increased reliability of 5G means that robots and autonomous delivery vehicles have less down time and better connectivity to the central network when delivering parcels and completing tasks.

As the fifth-generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks, 5G promises to provide 10 times the bandwidth over 4G networks and up to 10 gigabits per second as well as lower latency and more reliability. That puts it in a position to power the industrial metaverse, which can support simulations of factories and also drive a future of mixed and virtual reality devices.

“In order to fulfill the promise of the industrial transformation, companies need secure, reliable and high-performance wireless connectivity,” Silviu Apostu, principal at Matterwave Ventures. “In a short span of time, Firecell has built a compelling product and convinced demanding customers to deploy it in their production environments.”

To help more companies realize the digital industrial, internet of things and metaverse future, Firecell said, it would use the new funding to add new features to its product line including geolocation and protection against cyberattacks. The company said it intends to deploy its offering in Europe, notably Germany, where Firecell is establishing a subsidiary. Firecell also intends to expand its team by about 15 people, building out its engineering, research and sales teams.

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