Swarm Technologies Co-Founders Sara Spangelo and Ben Longmier. Photo: Swarm Technologies

Swarm Technologies, a company developing a low-cost global communications network, closed its Series A financing round of $25 million. The round was led by Craft Ventures and Sky Dayton, founder of EarthLink and Boingo, with participation from Social Capital, 4DX Ventures, and NJF Capital. Swarm will use the capital to accelerate software and hardware integrations for customer deployments, to continue hiring talent, and to deploy a constellation of 150 satellites over the next 18 months.

“We set out to solve the decades-old problem of expensive connectivity that is not universally accessible: billions of people around the world still lack basic internet access,” said Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sara Spangelo. “With 75 billion connected devices coming online around the world over the next six years, viable and affordable network access will be essential. For this reason, our technology has caught the attention of dozens of companies — from early-stage startups to Fortune 100 enterprises — with whom we have completed successful pilot tests in agriculture, maritime, ground transportation, and text messaging services.”

According to the release, Swarm has developed the world’s smallest two-way communications satellites to enable low-cost, space-based, Internet of Things (IOT) connectivity anywhere in the world. Earlier this month, Swarm also agreed to pay the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) $900K for an unauthorized launch in India.