Pomegra
Danish IoT connectivity provider Onomondo has secured over €100 million from Aspirity Partners, which will take a majority stake, with state-backed EIFO raising its holding and Verdane exiting.
Key Takeaways
- Onomondo raised more than €100M in a mix of primary and secondary capital, led by Aspirity Partners, which takes majority control.
- EIFO increases its stake, while Verdane, which led the 2022 round, sells out. The deal is expected to close in early 2027.
- Valuation is undisclosed. Onomondo serves about 500 customers, including Maersk, Carlsberg and Husqvarna.
Lead
Onomondo, the Copenhagen-based IoT connectivity company founded in 2018, announced on 30 September 2026 that it has secured more than €100 million in a deal led by pan-European private equity firm Aspirity Partners. Aspirity has signed a definitive agreement to acquire a majority stake. The money is meant to fund international expansion and platform development, and closing is expected in early 2027.
This is a control transaction more than a classic venture round. Part of the capital goes to the company, and part goes to existing shareholders selling down.
Who Is Putting Money In, and Who Is Leaving?
Aspirity Partners is the lead and incoming majority owner, while EIFO, Denmark's sovereign investment fund and an Onomondo backer since 2021, is increasing its position alongside it. Verdane, the Nordic growth investor that led Onomondo's $21 million round in June 2022, will exit. That earlier round also included Maersk Growth, People Ventures and the Danish Growth Fund.
The company has not disclosed the valuation, revenue or headcount. Founders Henrik Aagaard and Michael Karlsen remain involved, with Aagaard as CTO and Rasmus Jensen as CEO. The absence of a stated price makes it hard to judge what Aspirity paid for control, and the primary-versus-secondary split is also unpublished.
What Does Onomondo Actually Sell?
Onomondo sells IoT connectivity infrastructure: a proprietary end-to-end stack with direct integrations to nearly 700 mobile networks worldwide. Its products include SoftSIM, a software-based SIM that removes the need for a hardware chip, and an eSIM remote manager compatible with the SGP.32 standard. It also offers hybrid public and private network deployments and cloud connectors that route device data into customers' cloud environments.
Onomondo says connectivity itself is a small part of the revenue picture, with infrastructure services making up the majority. That distinguishes it from plain SIM resellers competing on per-megabyte pricing.
The most visible deployment is a private LTE network across more than 450 Maersk vessels, with a core network running onboard each ship. Beyond Maersk, the customer list of roughly 500 includes Carlsberg and Husqvarna.
Why Would a Private Equity Firm Want Control?
Aspirity is buying a recurring-revenue infrastructure business with a sticky customer base, which fits a buyout profile better than a venture one. Embedded devices rarely change connectivity providers once deployed, because swapping a SIM in the field is costly. That makes revenue predictable, and predictability is what a majority buyer pays for.
The 2022 round was $21 million. A deal more than four times that size, with a change of control, suggests the business has outgrown the growth-equity stage that Verdane served. It also suggests Verdane's fund timeline, rather than any shortfall in the business, may have driven its exit, though no party has said so.
Where Does Physical AI Fit?
Onomondo has framed physical AI, meaning robots and autonomous machines that need constant connectivity at the edge, as a future opportunity rather than a current revenue driver. The company acknowledges that the scale of physical AI deployment remains small as of autumn 2026. Aagaard has tied the pitch to the data infrastructure problems that AI deployments create, and Aspirity has described a structural shift toward ubiquitous connectivity and edge intelligence.
That framing deserves caution. The existing business runs on shipping, brewing and industrial equipment, not humanoid robots, and the physical AI narrative is a growth thesis rather than a booked contract pipeline. The near-term case for the deal rests on the installed base.
What Comes Next for Onomondo?
The first milestone is regulatory and transactional: the deal must close, which is expected in early 2027. After that, the stated priorities are hiring, expanding infrastructure and international market growth, with Aspirity's ownership likely to push for geographic expansion beyond Onomondo's European base.
Two risks stand out. The IoT connectivity market is crowded with global players and mobile operators that can bundle connectivity at low cost, so Onomondo's infrastructure differentiation has to keep justifying its pricing. And if the SGP.32 eSIM standard commoditizes remote SIM management, as many in the industry expect, proprietary SoftSIM needs to remain a reason customers stay, not just a legacy feature.
Outlook
Onomondo's €100M+ deal converts a venture-backed Danish scale-up into a private equity-controlled infrastructure platform, with EIFO keeping a public-sector stake and Verdane cashing out. The figures that would show whether the price was fair, including valuation, revenue and growth rate, remain undisclosed. Closing in early 2027 will start the test of whether the infrastructure model scales internationally and whether physical AI becomes a revenue line rather than a talking point.
