Yet another Canadian startup has caught the eye of an international brand.
General Electric recently completed its $153 million USD acquisition of the Vancouver-based IoT startup Bit Stew, marking one of the province’s largest tech exits to date.
The Globe and Mail reports that this also bodes well for the company’s early investor Yaletown Partners, as it marks the venture capital firm’s largest exit. The acquisition comes three years after the firm led Bit Stew’s $5.4 million Series A funding round in 2013. The VC firm will walk away from the sale with $22.5 million.
Despite Canadian startups being accused of selling too soon, Bit Stew’s co-founder Kevin Collins stated that selling was the only way to scale the company. He will reportedly receive $20 million for his stake.
Bit Stew began its journey in 2009 after the Silicon Valley-based co-founders decided to move to Vancouver. Since then, the company has gone on to open additional offices in Mountain View, Melbourne, Madrid and London.
Furthermore, the company has been ranked among the top 100 analytics companies and top 100 IoT startups by Forbes. Its early mandate involved gathering data from sensors via “connected devices” to help companies plan predictive maintenance on industrial systems to help avoid interruptions.
Eventually however, Bit Stew expanded into monitoring transportation, oil, gas and aircraft operations, which supposedly attracted the interest of GE and pushed them to lead Bit Stew’s $17.2 million funding round this past May.
GE, according to The Globe, will incorporate Bit Stew’s technology into existing operations. Collins, along with co-founder Alex Clark, will take executive roles with GE.
Image credit: William Thompson
Related: How Wavefront is growing mobile, wireless and IoT in B.C.
[source]Globe and Mail[/source]
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