Pixeom scored $15 million in funding from Intel Capital Partners, National Grid Partners, and others. The company, which describes itself as a software-defined edge provider, plans to use the funding to scale its business, hire more engineers, and invest in more marketing and business development.
Pixeom is the brainchild of brother-and-sister team Sam Nagar and Karishma Nagar. Sam Nagar serves as CEO and Karishma Nagar is president. The two launched the company in 2014 and initially planned to make a "personal cloud device" that combined the company’s software with a hardware device that a consumer could plug into their home internet. The device would provide cloud storage for digital content so users wouldn’t have to pay a third party such as Dropbox or Google Drive for storage or use multiple USB hard drives.
But Sam Nagar said that soon after launch, the company pivoted away from that business model and instead decided to license its software to companies and partner with hardware firms. Samsung, an early customer, also became an investor in Pixeom through its Samsung Catalyst Fund. Today the company not only works with hardware companies but also with telecom operators and enterprises to help them build their edge data center infrastructure. Customers include Intel, Google, SK Telecom, Vodafone, and National Grid. To date, the company said it has had over 1 million installations of its software. Hagar said they are working with other telecom players, including those in the U.S., but declined to name them.
The company says its software makes it possible to orchestrate cloud functionality on premise. It can manage large-scale, geographically distributed infrastructure and workloads. And it also offers tools so developers can build and debug containerized applications that are intended to run on the edge. “Our software platform can be deployed on premises and can also go into edge data centers or be deployed at a tower,” Nagar said.
Timing is Everything
Nagar believes 5G is a big opportunity for the company. As operators build their 5G networks and cater to enterprises they need more multi-access edge computing capabilities. And Nagar says that the software-defined edge allows operators to do some of the same things that network slicing will provide such as the ability to divvy up resources at the edge and assign them to different customers. The software can help run customer premises equipment (CPEs) or be used for most network functions virtualization (NFV) applications.
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He also believes that Pixeom has an early edge over potential competitors because the company has already worked with a number of enterprises in different vertical markets including energy, manufacturing, retail, and healthcare. And it understands the challenges operators face. “Someone else can provide the NFV and the applications. We orchestrate it,” Nagar said.
Pixeom has about 90 employees and is based on Santa Clara, California.