Blues, a fast-rising force in the Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure space, has just added another $8 million to its war chest—an opportunistic follow-on round led by XYZ Venture Capital, and hot on the heels of its $25 million Series B raise with Sequoia Capital this past May.
The reason? Unrelenting investor interest and an inflection point in the market for intelligent connected products.
“This wasn’t planned so soon,” admitted Blues CEO Ian Small. “But we had more investor demand than we could accommodate in our last round. The market is pulling us forward.”
It’s not just venture capitalists leaning in—customers are, too. Blues’ platform is gaining traction across sectors like logistics, cold-chain transport, and industrial batteries, as companies rush to embed intelligence into legacy hardware. For makers of physical products, Blues is shaping up to be a go-to partner in the race to turn dumb machines into data-driven services.
From Oversubscribed to Overdrive
The $8 million follow-on round wasn’t in the original script, but rising demand from both investors and customers forced Blues to hit the accelerator.
Leading the round was XYZ Venture Capital, a long-time backer of Blues and vocal supporter of its founder, Ray Ozzie—the tech luminary behind Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. “Customer pilots are becoming real deployments,” said XYZ’s Ross Fubini. “That’s when you double down.”
Blues has now raised $99 million to date, a healthy war chest for an IoT startup that’s found a surprisingly clear lane in a historically messy sector.
The IoT Platform for the Rest of Us
The IoT industry is littered with failed proof-of-concepts and overly complex tech stacks. What sets Blues apart is its singular focus on simplicity: easy-to-deploy, secure cloud connectivity for physical products—without the need for custom infrastructure or massive R&D investments.
Blues’ flagship product, Notecard, delivers secure cellular connectivity out of the box, dramatically reducing the time, cost, and complexity of getting data from the edge to the cloud.
It’s a plug-and-play proposition that’s resonating with product manufacturers who’ve long wanted to evolve their offerings without reinventing their tech stack—or their business model.
“We’re helping physical product makers become service companies,” said Ozzie, Blues’ founder and executive chair. “That’s the shift—IoT is no longer just telemetry. It’s a business model enabler.”
Industry Context: Why Now?
IoT has long been hyped as the next big thing, but the hype never quite matched up with adoption—until recently. Thanks to maturing hardware, ubiquitous cellular networks, and enterprise pressure to unlock recurring revenue, the timing finally aligns with the tech.
Blues is capitalizing on this convergence by offering what many incumbents can’t: simplicity, security, and scalability. Instead of just offering connectivity, Blues is selling the promise of faster innovation cycles and new revenue streams.
Where AWS and Microsoft offer powerful but heavyweight solutions for IoT deployments, Blues is carving out a niche for companies that want speed without a systems integrator. It’s IoT for the 99%.
The fresh capital will be poured into scaling Blues’ go-to-market efforts, expanding its customer success teams, and doubling down on product innovation. The goal: accelerate adoption and make the dream of intelligent, connected products a plug-and-play reality.
With customer deployments picking up steam and more industries seeking to modernize their product offerings, Blues seems well positioned to ride the next wave of the IoT revolution—one that’s finally less about infrastructure, and more about intelligence.
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