SORACOM joins KDDI group
Written by: Jake Martin
Published: August 2, 2017
Today, SORACOM, Inc. issued a joint release with KDDI Corporation to announce that we will join KDDI as a subsidiary by the end of August 2017.
When we launched Soracom in September 2015, our mission was to make the Internet of Things accessible to the smallest developers and scalable to the largest enterprises. Since then, Soracom has grown to serve more than 7000 customers and 350 partners around the world. In the past year, we have expanded operations into Europe and the US, and Soracom services are now available in over 120 countries. And we’re not slowing down. We’re hard at work expanding the scope and reach of our services to support a global IoT market growing rapidly in scale and sophistication.
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As announced in December 2016, KDDI now offers KDDI IoT Connect Air, combining KDDI’s high-quality cellular network with SORACOM vConnec Core, Soracom’s cloud-native mobile telecommunications core. Since that time, KDDI and Soracom have continued to collaborate closely.
As we move forward together, Soracom will operate as a subsidiary of KDDI, but our vision remains unchanged. Current and future customers will be able to take advantage of Soracom services as always, and both companies will work to support IoT development around the world with new offerings that take full advantage of KDDI’s IoT business foundation, Soracom’s cloud-native connectivity platform, and our combined IoT/M2M expertise and customer base.
Today’s announcement represents an extraordinary milestone for Soracom, and I am very pleased to be able to share this news. Soracom began as nothing more than an idea that I believed in: secure, scalable, cloud-native connectivity that makes IoT development easy. Then Soracom grew to include co-founders who shared my belief and team members willing to stake their careers on this idea. With the support and encouragement of investors like WiL and IVP, who understood the scope of our vision and recognized the strength of the team, we succeeded in bringing this idea of a readily-accessible IoT to life.
Today’s announcement represents an important moment along the way to fulfilling the unwavering belief, trust, and hard work of the Soracom team and the faith and support of our investors. As founders, we are honored to be able to repay that belief and support with the knowledge that together, we have creating something of enduring value in the world.
That said, we are acutely aware that our work has only begun. When a startup arrives at a milestone of this nature, it is often described in the tech industry as an “Exit.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Along with my co-founders, Dan Funato and Kenta Yasukawa, I recognize this announcement as an Entrance, one that opens a door to new goals and opportunities.
As I prepare myself for these new challenges, I am excited about the adventure that lies ahead. Earlier in my career, I helped to make AWS a successful division of Amazon — independent, but supported by and working within a larger enterprise. As Soracom joins with KDDI, the founding team expects to do the same, maintaining our entrepreneurial spirit as we grow an IoT connectivity platform business that may have started in Japan but will be used around the world.
From the very beginning, Soracom established a vision to “connect things and people all over the world” and made it our mission to lead the way in “using cloud and mobile technology to help make a better, more connected world.” We documented our mission and values very early, and have grown our business by gathering together teammates, investors, partners and collaborators who sympathize with them.
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As Peter Thiel wrote in Zero to One, the work of a founder continues for as long as there are new things to create. As founders, our task remains today what it was at the start: “to find singular ways to create new things that will make the future not just different, but better.”
An extraordinary global team that trusted each other gathered together and dedicated ourselves to making a great service that gives our customers the power to change the future. Today we have reached an important milestone, and now our work begins.
Thank you so much for your continued support, from our launch to today, and for all the days still to come.
Still Day One!
SORACOM, Inc.
Ken Tamagawa, CEO
Daichi Funato, COO
Kenta Yasukawa, CTO
