Summary

• Aspirity Partners will acquire a majority stake in Onomondo as part of a combined investment exceeding €100 million, with Denmark’s EIFO also increasing its backing.
• Onomondo operates its own IoT technology stack with access to around 680 networks and customers across more than 100 countries.
• Its deployment with Maersk links private LTE aboard 450 vessels with terrestrial mobile networks, illustrating the infrastructure problem behind continuous industrial asset monitoring.

Connecting an industrial device once is relatively easy; keeping hundreds of thousands of devices connected as they move between countries, mobile operators, factories, ports, trucks, and ships is sufficiently awkward that Copenhagen-based Onomondo has attracted more than €100 million for the network infrastructure sitting underneath them.

Onomondo has agreed a majority investment from Aspirity Partners, with Denmark’s sovereign investment fund EIFO increasing its existing stake as part of a combined investment exceeding €100 million. The companies have not disclosed Onomondo’s valuation or the precise ownership percentages after completion.

The investment is intended to expand Onomondo’s international operations and proprietary connectivity infrastructure rather than finance a conventional application-layer software product. The company operates technology spanning devices, radio access networks, its own network core, and cloud connections, giving customers a way to manage cellular IoT deployments across different countries and operators through one platform.

Onomondo says its infrastructure can access more than 680 mobile networks in over 180 countries, while more than 500 customers use its services, including Maersk, Carlsberg, and Husqvarna. The company itself serves customers in more than 100 countries.

IoT gets harder once devices start moving

Many connected-device deployments begin with a deceptively simple requirement: put a SIM in a machine and send its data somewhere useful. Complexity grows quickly when the same product is sold internationally, installed in remote infrastructure, transported across borders, or expected to operate for years without engineers physically replacing connectivity hardware.

Traditional mobile arrangements can leave an enterprise dealing with different operators, roaming agreements, SIM profiles, network technologies, coverage gaps, and cloud-routing configurations. Those problems become more expensive when the device is embedded inside a vehicle, industrial machine, energy asset, payment terminal, or shipping container that may be difficult to reach once deployed.

Onomondo’s model moves more of that complexity into its network infrastructure. Its products include conventional IoT SIMs, software-based SIM technology, eSIM management, cloud connectors, and a private wireless core intended to let devices move between public and private networks without requiring customers to rebuild their connectivity architecture each time.

The company’s strongest example is its work with Maersk, where private LTE infrastructure has been installed aboard 450 vessels. Devices can operate over the shipboard network at sea and transition to terrestrial mobile networks as cargo moves through ports and inland transport, creating a continuous path for telemetry from connected containers.

Shipping shows what continuous connectivity enables

For refrigerated cargo, the commercial value sits above the network itself. A container carrying food or pharmaceuticals can report temperature and operational conditions while crossing an ocean, allowing customers to identify a problem before the shipment reaches its destination rather than discovering damage when the doors are opened days later.

The Maersk deployment uses an Onomondo software-defined LTE core aboard each vessel, supporting LTE, LTE-M, and NB-IoT. Onomondo says the local network remains operational even when satellite communications are unavailable, while the wider architecture provides a path towards future 5G IoT support.

That arrangement also shows why IoT infrastructure is not simply another consumer mobile service sold in bulk. The connectivity layer has to deal with device identity, routing, security, local and international coverage, different radio technologies, cloud integration, and network hand-offs while remaining economical enough to support devices that may transmit only small amounts of data.

As more processing moves onto machines and edge devices, those requirements can become more demanding rather than less. Local AI can reduce the amount of raw information sent to the cloud, but devices still need a reliable channel for events, updates, control messages, model changes, and selected data generated in the physical world.

The investment is a bet on infrastructure

Aspirity’s majority investment therefore gives Onomondo capital to extend a platform that competes partly with traditional mobile operators, partly with specialist IoT connectivity providers, and partly with the connectivity services embedded inside larger cloud and industrial platforms.

Its claim to differentiation rests on controlling more of the underlying network stack rather than simply purchasing wholesale connectivity and reselling access. That model could give Onomondo greater visibility and flexibility, although owning more of the infrastructure also means carrying the engineering cost of operating, securing, and expanding it across an unusually fragmented global telecoms environment.

EIFO’s participation adds a public-investment dimension to the transaction. The Danish sovereign fund has backed Onomondo since 2021 and is increasing its investment alongside Aspirity, keeping Danish public capital involved as a specialist connectivity company expands outside its home market.

The transaction remains a majority investment rather than a straightforward venture round, so the €100 million-plus figure should not be read as new cash arriving entirely on Onomondo’s balance sheet. The announcement describes a combined investment led by Aspirity with EIFO participating, without breaking down primary growth capital from any secondary purchase of existing shares.

That distinction does not diminish the infrastructure bet behind the deal. Enterprises are connecting more physical equipment to software systems, but those deployments become useful only when data can move reliably from wherever the asset happens to be. Onomondo’s next phase will test whether a European specialist can make that underlying network layer sufficiently invisible that businesses stop having to redesign connectivity every time their devices cross another boundary.