Phunware Lands $30 Million in Venture Capital

Phunware announced that it has raised $26.25 million of a $30 million Series E funding led by Firsthand Technology Value Fund.
The Austin-based company expects to close its over-subscribed funding round within 60 days.
The latest funding round includes current investors Fraser McCombs Ventures, Maxima Ventures, Wild Basin Investment and the Central Texas Angel Network. It also includes new strategic investors Cisco and WWE.
Since its founding in 2009, Phunware has raised $43 million including the latest investment.
As part of the funding, Kevin Landis, Chairman and President of Firsthand, and Chase Fraser, Managing Partner of Fraser McCombs Capital, join Phunware’s board of directors.
Phunware had 2013 revenues of $22.1 million.
“The company currently supports more than 1 trillion annual transactions on its “multiscreen cloud platform” across nearly 190 countries and 10 languages,” according to a news release.
Phunware provides mobile development services for several top-tier customers including E! Entertainment Television, NBC Sports, WWE, NASCAR, CBS, Qualcomm, Edmunds, Jawbone, HomeAway, Turner, UHealth, Transamerica, King, Warner Brothers, AT&T and Adobe.
“We continue to have a very ambitious vision for Phunware – to enable our customers to engage, manage and monetize every connected device on Earth,” Alan S. Knitowski, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Phunware, said in a news release. “We have achieved tremendous growth since inception and this new funding will further accelerate our MaaS platform investments and geographic reach in supporting the multiscreen goals and objectives of our brands’ anytime anywhere audiences globally. 50 billion devices will mean 50 billion opportunities … and we intend to touch them all.”