Sydney-based technology company Morse Micro has secured $88 million in Series C funding for its long-range Wi-Fi chips, with the federal government tipping in $35 million via the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC).
The funding round was led by Japanese semiconductor designer MegaChips, which itself is worth $1.4 billion (144 billion yen). MegaChips was also the lead investor in Morse Micro’s $140 million Series B round in September 2022.
That round was topped up with another $30 million from superannuation funds 10 weeks later.
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This week’s Series C round also included backing from existing investors, including Blackbird, Main Sequence, Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull, along with superannuation companies Hostplus, NGS and UniSuper.
While Morse Micro has not disclosed its current valuation, the Australian Financial Review reports the company is now valued at just over $500 million.
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The deep tech company was founded in 2016 by Wi-Fi pioneers, and former Broadcom engineers, Michael De Nil and Andrew Terry. It spent years working on research and development before moving to commercialising its intellectual property last year.
The company’s low-power Wi-Fi HaLow microchips allow Internet of Things (IoT) devices to communicate with each other over long distances and through walls and other obstacles. The chips work across distances of up to one kilometre in urban settings, and up to 16 kilometres in rural areas.
The microchips have a wide range of applications, including for consumer products, agriculture, mining, renewables, transport and smart metering.
Morse Micro plans to use the Series C funding to accelerate growth and develop its next-generation technology.
NRF says it’s backing local R&D
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Morse Micro is the latest Australian tech company to receive investment from the federal government’s NRFC, following recent investments in Melbourne-based biotech company PolyActiva, Adelaide nanosatellite startup Myriota and cloud computing provider Vault Cloud, among others.
The $15 billion NRFC was established in 2023 to make equity investments in, and provide loans to, Australian companies in seven key priority areas, including manufacturing technologies and products that advance Australia’s industrial capability.
NRF chief executive David Gall told Capital Brief the fund invested in Morse Micro because the company designs and prototypes its microchips locally, despite the semiconductors being manufactured in Taiwan.
“The research, the development, the design, the prototyping, the testing, the verification and validation process of the microchips is all done here in New South Wales,” Gall said.
In a statement, Gall described Morse Micro as the country’s “largest semiconductor manufacturer and a home-grown Australian success story”.
“Wi-Fi was invented and patented by CSIRO scientists in 1993, and we are proud to be investing in an Australian company that is once again enabling next-generation Wi-Fi connectivity for the rest of the world.”
Gall added Morse Micro employs 130 people in Australia, including in regional New South Wales.
“Our investment will diversify the Australian economy, strengthen the nation’s sovereign manufacturing capabilities, and build local expertise in semiconductor design and innovation,” he said.
In the same statement, Morse Micro co-founder and CEO Michael De Nil said the Series C funding represents “another strong vote of confidence in our mission to be the number one wireless IoT chip company in the world”.
“The future of IoT depends on connectivity that is long-range, power-efficient, secure and delivers on throughput — and that’s exactly where we are leading,” he added.
“With this raise, we are accelerating our expansion and preparing for the next phase of our company’s growth.”
