More moolah for Mavenir

• Mavenir is trying to develop into a full network systems supplier for mobile operators
• But that kind of effort requires capital and the vendor is getting another cash injection to help it on its way
• Mavenir is facing increasingly strong competition in a tough RAN and core market but is still winning deals

Open RAN and mobile core systems vendor Mavenir is getting a top-up investment of up to $75m from an unidentified “existing investor” the company has announced. 

Its largest investor is private equity firm Siris Capital Group, which last year led a $100m funding round for Mavenir that, according to TelecomTV’s industry sources, also included contributions from chip giants Intel and Qualcomm. 

Koch Strategic Platforms is also a shareholder in Mavenir, which in 2022 raised $155m and took out a $95m loan as it strived to become a full network systems supplier to network operators that want to engage with a single vendor for their next-generation networks.  

Pardeep Kohli, president and CEO of Mavenir, commented: “Mavenir continues to be an industry leader at the forefront of network innovation and automation. With our investor group’s support, we will accelerate strategic investments in Open RAN and 5G core solutions and efficiently meet our product roadmap. We are excited to continue building networks of the future for the benefit of our customers and partners.” 

The company is the vendor most widely regarded by network operator executives as an Open RAN market leader, according to the results of a survey conducted by TelecomTV for our Open RAN Market Perception Report. It is facing increasing competition from the likes of Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung networks in the still emerging but growing Open RAN market. However, this year it has announced engagements in Saudi Arabia and India and recently struck a five-year collaboration agreement with cloud giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) which, the companies claim, will “revolutionise the deployment of telecom workloads running on AWS.”  

According to Crunchbase, the company has raised about $1bn since it was founded. It doesn’t report its financials but its annual revenues are estimated to be in the region of $500 to $600m. It filed for an IPO in 2020 but put those plans on ice only weeks after filing its paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).   

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV