Samsara Inc. is an American

IoT The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other com ...

company headquartered in

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. The company has additional offices in San Jose, California, Atlanta, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Munich, Warsaw, and Mexico City. Samsara develops a connected operations platform for tracking fleets of vehicles and other equipment. To date, the company has raised $930 million in funding.

History

Co-founders

Sanjit Biswas Sanjit Biswas () is an American Internet entrepreneur and computer scientist and co-founder of Samsara (company), Samsara, an Internet of Things company headquartered in San Francisco, California that provides hardware and software for physical ope ...

and John Bicket met while graduate students at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. The pair founded Samsara in 2015 after selling their previous startup, Meraki, to

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

in 2012. Samsara was initially created to provide wireless sensors, and

Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen ...

became a

Series A round A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...

early investor. Samsara achieved

unicorn The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead. In European literature and art, the unicorn has for the last thousand years o ...

status in March 2018 after a funding round led to a valuation of over $1B. Another funding round later that year rose the valuation to $3.6B backed by Andreessen Horowitz and

General Catalyst General Catalyst, formerly General Catalyst Partners (GCP), is an American venture capital firm focused on early stage and growth investments. The firm was founded in 2000 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also has offices in San Francisco, Palo A ...

. Samsara expanded internationally and opened an office in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

in 2018, which expanded into its European headquarters in 2019. Samsara also expanded their footprint domestically into

Midtown Atlanta Midtown Atlanta, or Midtown, is a high-density commercial and residential neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia. The exact geographical extent of the area is ill-defined due to differing definitions used by the city, residents, and local business ...

with a new east coast office location. A Series F funding round saw Samsara's valuation rise to $6.3B with

Tiger Global Management Tiger Global Management, LLC (often referred to as Tiger Global and formerly known as Tiger Technology) is an American investment firm. It mainly focuses on Internet, software, consumer, and financial technology industries. Background and histo ...

and

Dragoneer Investment Group The Dragoneer Investment Group (Dragoneer) is an American investment firm based in San Francisco, California. The firm focuses on technology investments in both public and private markets globally. Background Dragoneer is based in San Francis ...

joining for the first time. Samsara was impacted during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

which resulted in a reduction to their staff. In 2020, Samsara recognized 5 companies with its Top Fleet Awards. These included Sprint Waste Services for safest fleet, GP Transco for best fleet for drivers,

ArcBest ArcBest Corporation is an American holding company for truckload and less-than-truckload (LTL) freight, freight brokerage, household good moving, and transportation management companies. Historically, the company also owned furniture, banking, a ...

for fleet innovator, Goodfellow Bros for excellence in performance, and Athens-Clarke County for excellence in public fleet management. In February 2021, the startup announced that it had surpassed $300 million in run-rate subscription revenue, serving over 20,000 customers and adding seven new patents. In July, Samsara partnered with

EVgo EVgo is an electric vehicle DC fast charging station network in the United States, with more than 850 charging locations . The company's charge stations are located in 34 states and are compatible with all major auto manufacturers.In 2022 the co ...

, a public EV charging network, with the hopes of expediting the electrification process for its commercial fleet customers. It was reported in September 2021 that Samsara had filed their

Form S-1 Form S-1 is an SEC filing used by companies planning on going public to register their securities with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as the "registration statement by the Securities Act of 1933". The S-1 contains the basic b ...

for a proposed

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

. The IPO was filed on November 19, 2021.

References

External links

* {{Finance links , name = Samsara Inc. , symbol = IOT , reuters = IOT.N , bloomberg = IOT:US , sec_cik = 1642896 , yahoo = IOT , google = IOT 2015 establishments in California American companies established in 2015 Technology companies established in 2015 Internet of things companies Information technology companies of the United States Companies based in San Francisco 2021 initial public offerings Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange