SANTA CLARA — Highway 9 Networks has launched from stealth, introducing the industry’s first mobile cloud for delivering cloud-native mobility and services for the AI-driven enterprise. Developed by veteran leaders from VMware, the Highway 9 Mobile Cloud enables voice + data coverage everywhere, reliable and high-performance mobile connectivity for AI-driven use cases like robotics, factory automation and drones, and always-on mobile data access for top priority apps and communications.
The company says it has raised over $25 million of funding from investors including Mayfield, General Catalyst and Detroit Ventures, as well as a number of prominent enterprise and institutional customers.
The Highway 9 founding team previously built multiple billion-dollar business lines at VMware and have applied their cloud-native design and operational learnings to the development of the Highway 9 Mobile Cloud – a first in the traditionally physical and telecom infrastructure-centric mobile networking industry.
With the proliferation of mobile phones, tablets and an increasingly hybrid work force in today’s enterprises, there is a high demand for consistent mobile coverage across indoor, outdoor and campus environments. In parallel, manufacturing facilities and distribution centers are embracing AI-driven, autonomous and mobile devices + machinery. Today’s fixed wireless solutions do not adequately address the mobility, resiliency, and predictable, low-latency performance requirements needed by this growing number of mobile-first use cases. Likewise, distributed antenna systems (DAS), which were the primary tool to extend carrier cellular networks into the enterprise, cannot meet the exploding demands in this area.
Several advances in private mobile technology, including the availability of free spectrum, multi-eSIM support and private 5G, finally make it possible to address the needs of the mobile enterprise. Highway 9 Networks has leveraged these technology advances and combined them with a robust set of cloud-based mobile services to build a first-of-its-kind mobile cloud.
Highway 9 Mobile Cloud enables smart phones, tablets, computers, new AI-driven devices, and the proliferation of next gen IoT to interconnect with apps, data and each other, as well as cloud services. It addresses the key enterprise requirements of cleanly integrating into existing IT infrastructure and security policies, seamlessly operating across mobile service providers, and delivering a cloud-based approach to automate and lifecycle manage the full mobile stack.
“We created a mobile cloud for the enterprise, building on the superior range, mobility, resiliency, predictability and low-latency characteristics of private cellular technology, and coupled it with a fully cloud-native platform. The Highway 9 Mobile Cloud delivers the always-on, performant mobile network needed for private mobility and modern AI-aware systems, regardless of whether they are indoors, outdoor, campus-wide or beyond,” said Allwyn Sequeira, founder and CEO, Highway 9 Networks. “Much like the last decade saw the migration of servers and apps to the public cloud, we believe the next decade will see the migration of mobile and AI clients and devices to the mobile cloud, unleashing a whole new wave of innovation.”
