By Karen Peattie
SCOTLAND’S first internet of things (IoT) accelerator programme has secured backing from a series of major US tech giants, including Silicon Valley-headquartered Intel.
Filament STAC confirmed that San Francisco-based Twilio, Plexus Corp, Keysight, and Fortune 500 electronics group Arrow Electronics are also among the brands backing the industry-government partnership aimed at producing Scottish IoT firms capable of scaling and competing globally.
Launched in October, the programme is based at Skypark in Glasgow. It has a three-year target to create more than 25 IoT companies supporting about 750 jobs, reporting revenue in the region of £750 million, and cohort companies raising investment in excess of £100m.
Paul Wilson, chief executive of Filament STAC, said: “Essentially, we are creating a IoT tech cluster here in Scotland. "
He noted that Twilio will “support our cohort to develop industry-leading products”, adding: “Twilio provides platforms and services to build innovative IoT solutions, connecting them to reliable cellular networks, ensuring our STAC companies connect creatively and reliably to their devices and customers.”
Angela Forbes, IoT account executive, UK and Ireland for Twilio, a leader in IoT service provision that counts Uber, Airbnb, Peloton, and Netflix among its customers, pointed to STAC's support for local start-ups on their journey to becoming "tomorrow’s best-known brands”.
Plexus Corp’s executive vice-president and regional president for EMEA Ronnie Darroch, who is also non-executive chair of STAC, said: “We are delighted to be involved in STAC as Scotland is renowned for its contributions to entrepreneurialism and innovation. We look forward to providing support for the next generation of innovators and disruptors that will create the products that build a better world.”
The companies in the first cohort are: Acu-Flow (trading as Nebu-Flow), Lupovis, Gibson Robotics, Toto Sleep, Lynkeos, Radisoft, WashR, Jirasoft, BGR, 5G3i, Fyne Labs and Soltropy.
Filament STAC is backed by Scottish Enterprise and CENSIS (Scotland’s Innovation Centre for sensing, imaging and IoT technologies). Its partners in Scotland include Anderson Anderson & Brown, Burness Paull, Scintilla, Arceptive, Soben, Integrated Graphene, and Beringar.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here