Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been a recurring and resurging theme among Silicon Valley startups and Big Tech alike. At its core, the idea is to put every “thing” online and potentially also imbue smart capabilities. The first wave of IoT was primarily about inexpensive wireless connectivity, while the more recent wave was concerned more about making “things” smart by adding machine learning. Perhaps the most successful such product was the Nest thermostat, which Google acquired in 2014. In its current incarnation, IoT is not so much a “new internet,” as much as it is a collection of high-end household appliances like smart thermostats, fridges, and washing machines. IoT is enabled by a set of technologies that have become low-cost to enable new use cases. These include low-cost touch screens, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, sensors, and, in some cases, machine learning.

Industrial IoT is the latest resurgence of these technologies, which focuses on real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance of industrial appliances and robots. At NexStar Partners, Dr. Jonyer led the investment thesis for industrial IoT and predictive maintenance and evaluated numerous related technologies, such as sensor data, data lakes, and time-series prediction.