connectivity
(15)
Aerwave
Aerwave is a Texas-based proptech company that designs, deploys and operates next-generation managed Wi-Fi for multifamily residential communities. It delivers property-wide, gigabit-speed internet that is secure and always on, paired with 24/7 domestic support, an owner analytics dashboard, and a capital program that lets property owners deploy infrastructure with no upfront cost. Aerwave works exclusively with real estate owners, developers and operators across the multifamily, build-to-rent, single-family rental and student-housing markets.
Formance
Formance is an open-source financial infrastructure company that gives developers a programmable core ledger and a connectivity layer for moving money across banks, payment processors, and wallets. Its stack - Ledger, Connectivity, Flows, and Reconciliation - lets fintechs and platforms track every asset movement with double-entry precision, orchestrate payments across providers, and automatically reconcile internal records against external statements. Founded in 2021 and backed by PayPal Ventures and Portage, Formance positions itself as building-block infrastructure for the 'financial internet' rather than a payment processor that touches customer funds.
Dennis Thankachan
Dennis Thankachan is the co-founder and CEO of Lightyear, a New York software company that automates how enterprises buy and manage telecom and network services. A former Goldman Sachs banker and hedge fund investor at PointState Capital, he built a thesis around telecom while investing in the sector, then left finance in 2019 to fix an industry he describes as a multi-trillion-dollar market with almost no happy customers. Under his leadership Lightyear has raised roughly $48.6 million, closed a $31 million Series B led by Altos Ventures in 2024, and serves customers including Palo Alto Networks, Five Guys, Pandora Jewelry, and Teladoc.
Ed Wolff
Ed Wolff is the CEO and board member of Aerwave, a Dallas-based company that builds and operates managed Wi-Fi networks for multifamily apartment communities. A multifamily-industry veteran with more than 25 years in real estate and technology, he joined Aerwave in 2024 as president and chief revenue officer before stepping into the CEO role, and has led the company through a Series B raise, expansion across dozens of U.S. markets, and recognition as a Broadband Communities Multifamily Partner of the Year. Wolff's earlier career spans senior roles at LeaseLock, RealPage, Cortland, Pinnacle, and Place Properties.
Lantronix
Lantronix is an Irvine, California-based global provider of secure IoT and remote environment management solutions that combine intelligent hardware, connectivity, software-as-a-service and engineering services. Founded in 1989 and publicly traded on Nasdaq as LTRX, the company builds device servers, IoT gateways, cellular routers, console servers and PoE switches, paired with cloud management platforms like Percepxion and ConsoleFlow, to help organizations connect, compute, comprehend and control equipment at the edge across automotive, industrial, smart city, defense and enterprise IT markets.
SPARK Microsystems
SPARK Microsystems is a Montreal-based fabless semiconductor company building ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless transceivers that aim for wire-like performance without the wire. Its patented LE-UWB technology delivers ultra-low latency, high data throughput, and very low power draw, targeting applications where Bluetooth falls short: wireless audio, gaming peripherals, AR/VR and AI wearables, presence detection, and industrial IoT. Founded in 2016 by researchers out of Montreal's engineering community, SPARK has raised roughly CAD $48M+ and is scaling commercial adoption of its second-generation SR1120 transceiver.
Tashinga Musiyazviriyo
Tashinga Musiyazviriyo is the Founder and CEO of The Singular, a Johannesburg-based digital transformation company building purpose-driven IoT, AI, and private 5G network solutions across industries including mining, telecommunications, manufacturing, smart cities, and healthcare. With a career forged inside Ericsson's core network engineering teams and a deep grounding in mobile network design and performance, Tashinga brings both technical precision and entrepreneurial drive to the challenge of connecting Africa's industries to the future.
Ahmed Khattak
Ahmed Khattak is the founder and CEO of US Mobile, the only American carrier built natively on the public cloud that lets customers ride and switch between all three major networks (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile) on demand. A Pakistani immigrant who landed on an F1 student visa, he spent a decade clawing US Mobile to $100M in annual recurring revenue, then doubled it to $200M in nine months. Before that he co-founded GSM Nation, a $130M unlocked-phone marketplace that taught him how the carriers really make money.
Sail Internet
Sail Internet is a Santa Clara-based internet service provider that uses a hybrid of fiber and fixed-wireless technology to deliver high-speed, no-contract broadband to homes and businesses across the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley. Founded in 2015 by Stanford-trained broadband engineers, the company positions itself as a customer-first, net-neutral alternative to incumbent cable and telecom giants, reaching residences, multi-dwelling communities, and enterprises with gigabit-class connectivity that skips costly trench-and-dig infrastructure.
Jing Liu
Jing Liu is the Founder and CEO of SIMO (formerly Skyroam), the AI-driven cloud connectivity platform that lets devices roam across 300+ mobile carriers in 145+ countries without a physical SIM card. She founded the company in 2008 in Silicon Valley, pioneered patented virtual SIM (vSIM) technology, raised $63.5M in funding including a $20M Series C2 in 2019, and has built SIMO into a platform serving over 15 million users and 6+ million connected IoT devices. Under her leadership, SIMO extended its reach from travel hotspots to enterprise IoT, automotive, and mission-critical connectivity.
John Gedmark
John Gedmark is the CEO and Co-founder of Astranis Space Technologies, a San Francisco-based aerospace company building next-generation geostationary satellites. He previously helped shape the commercial space industry as co-founder and executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, where he influenced President Obama's 2010 decision to use commercial space transportation for NASA missions - a shift worth over $10 billion to the industry. At Astranis, he has led the company from a Y Combinator startup to a $2.8 billion valuation with a $1+ billion backlog, operating a fleet of MicroGEO satellites that bring dedicated broadband to underserved regions across Alaska, the Philippines, Mexico, and beyond.
Ryan McLinko
Ryan McLinko is the co-founder and CTO of Astranis Space Technologies, a San Francisco-based company building compact, software-defined geostationary satellites to bring affordable broadband to underserved regions worldwide. An MIT-trained aerospace engineer who cut his teeth on cubesats at Planet Labs and the Dream Chaser spaceplane at Sierra Nevada, McLinko co-founded Astranis in 2015 with CEO John Gedmark. The company has since launched five satellites, secured over $1.2 billion in funding including a $450M Series E in May 2026, and been named Prime Contractor for multiple U.S. Space Force programs — all while being valued at $2.8 billion.
Ian Small
Ian Small is the CEO of Blues, a Boston-based IoT connectivity company backed by $115M in funding including a $25M Sequoia-led round in 2025. A 30-year Silicon Valley veteran who started at Apple in 1989 working on QuickTime VR, Small went on to lead TokBox (Sequoia-backed video communications platform acquired by Telefonica), serve as Global Chief Data Officer at Telefonica overseeing 300M+ customers, and then spent five years as CEO of Evernote transforming the company through a massive technical overhaul before it was acquired by Bending Spoons in 2023. Known as an 'end-to-end operator' with a famous habit of deep customer listening, he joined Blues in June 2025 to lead the company's next phase of growth in making IoT connectivity accessible and affordable for product makers everywhere.
Lihua Zhu
Lihua Zhu is the CEO of WiFi Master Key at LinkSure Network, a Singapore-headquartered mobile internet company serving hundreds of millions of users globally with free, secure Wi-Fi connectivity. With a career spanning Princeton research labs, Microsoft engineering, Alibaba's DingTalk, and Momo Technology, Zhu brings a rare combination of deep academic research and large-scale operational execution to one of the world's most widely used connectivity apps.
Isfandiyar Shaheen
Isfandiyar 'Asfi' Shaheen is a serial entrepreneur and investment professional known for his work in global connectivity and financial modeling. After a successful career in Pakistan's industrial sector, he served as the first Entrepreneur in Residence at Facebook Connectivity, where he worked on innovative methods to deploy fiber optics. He is currently focused on the intersection of AI and financial analysis, building tools to empower modelers through code.