DigitalBridge Ventures' Inaugural Investment
Marks DigitalBridge’s Entry into Rapidly Growing Digital
Infrastructure Technology Vertical
Latest Round of Funding to Fuel Expansion of
Celona’s Global Sales, R&D, and Channel Development to
Capitalize on Significant Growth in Enterprise 5G Networks
DigitalBridge Group, Inc. (NYSE: DBRG) (“DigitalBridge”) today
announced that DigitalBridge Ventures, its recently announced
venture capital initiative, has led a $60 million Series C funding
round in Celona, Inc. (“Celona”), the first enterprise networking
company to bridge the gap between LTE/5G cellular wireless and
enterprise IT infrastructure.
Founded in 2019, Celona has established itself as a leading
innovator in the global private LTE/5G infrastructure market, which
is forecast to grow over 5x to almost $6 billion by 20241. In
November 2020, Celona launched its fully-integrated 5G LAN
platform, purpose-built to help organizations easily deploy,
operate and integrate a 5G cellular network within existing
infrastructures. Earlier this month, Celona and Verizon Business
launched a partnership to provide turn-key private networking
solutions that will accelerate enterprise 5G adoption across a wide
variety of use cases for Celona’s technology, including factory
automation, distance learning, real-time inventory management, and
supply chain logistics, among many others.
Celona’s Series C financing round also included participation
from all of Celona’s existing investors including NTTVC (Celona’s
Series B lead investor), Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest
Venture Partners, Qualcomm Ventures and Cervin Ventures. The new
financing brings Celona’s total capital investment to date to over
$100 million.
DigitalBridge Ventures’ inaugural investment extends the firm’s
investment management platform into high-growth companies across
emerging digital infrastructure technologies, a strategic and
directly adjacent space that complements DigitalBridge’s heritage
as an investor-operator in the physical layer of digital
infrastructure. DigitalBridge’s deep domain expertise, market
intelligence and broad portfolio provide unique insights and
natural strategic opportunities for DigitalBridge Ventures to
source, vet, and add value to companies across the emerging digital
infrastructure technology vertical. The DigitalBridge Ventures
initiative is led by Alexandre Villela, a seasoned venture
capitalist with over 25 years of experience investing in and
managing businesses in technology and digital infrastructure
domains.
“DigitalBridge Ventures provides DigitalBridge with a new avenue
to stay at the forefront of digital infrastructure by investing in
exceptional, disruptive businesses,” said Marc Ganzi, President and
CEO of DigitalBridge. “This is a key component of our plan to enter
new growth verticals in 2022 as a full-stack digital infrastructure
investor and allows us to bring our capabilities and expertise to
the software-defined network of the future.”
Ganzi added, “Celona is a pioneer in the private 5G market,
providing an industry-leading solution that will advance the future
of enterprise networking by delivering the low-latency,
high-reliability solutions enterprises are increasingly demanding.
We are excited to launch this new investment strategy, leveraging
DigitalBridge’s unique resources to identify and partner with
emerging, entrepreneurial leaders across the digital infrastructure
technology sector.”
“DigitalBridge’s interest and investment is another strong
indicator that 5G technology within the enterprise will transform
how organizations do business,” said Rajeev Shah, Co-Founder and
CEO of Celona. “With a first mover advantage, a track record of
successful execution and the support of world-class investors like
DigitalBridge, Celona is uniquely positioned to define and lead the
future of private 5G networking.”
Alexandre Villela, Senior Vice President of DigitalBridge
Ventures, said, “Digital infrastructure is rapidly evolving to
become software-defined, hyper-automated with extensive use of
artificial intelligence and truly based on cloud-native
technologies and consumption models. At DigitalBridge Ventures, we
want to partner with best-of-breed companies like Celona whose deep
specialization, scalable business models, and tangible value
propositions position them to accelerate innovation across
industries.”
About DigitalBridge Ventures
DigitalBridge Ventures is the venture capital initiative
launched by DigitalBridge in March 2022. The platform targets
emerging digital infrastructure technologies, supporting companies
with strong business models in growing markets that complement
DigitalBridge’s core strengths. Leveraging DigitalBridge’s deep
domain expertise, market intelligence and broad portfolio,
DigitalBridge Ventures possesses a unique edge to source, vet and
invest in growth-stage companies across the emerging digital
infrastructure technology vertical.
About Celona
Celona accelerates the adoption for business-critical apps in
the enterprise by taking advantage of the Citizens Broadband Radio
Service (CBRS) spectrum. Celona’s solution architecture is designed
to automate deployment of cellular wireless by enterprise IT
organizations and managed service providers, and drastically
simplify its integration with an existing enterprise IT
infrastructure. As the provider of the first networking platform
for enterprise cellular, Celona’s mission is to take enterprise
wireless to where it has not yet been. For more information, please
visit celona.io. Follow Celona on Twitter @celonaio.
About Alexandre Villela
Alexandre Villela has 25 years of experience in technology
investing and business building. In the last 10 years, Mr. Villela
has served as a Managing Director for Intel Capital and Qualcomm
Ventures, two of the largest corporate venture capital firms. Mr.
Villela has directly led more than 30 transactions with a focus on
digital infrastructure domains and led Qualcomm Ventures’ $200
million 5G investment fund. He also previously served as an
industry advisor to Advent International. Mr. Villela joined
DigitalBridge in 2021 to start the DigitalBridge Ventures
initiative.
About DigitalBridge
DigitalBridge (NYSE: DBRG) is a leading global digital
infrastructure REIT. With a heritage of over 25 years investing in
and operating businesses across the digital ecosystem including
cell towers, data centers, fiber, small cells, and edge
infrastructure, the DigitalBridge team manages a $45 billion
portfolio of digital infrastructure assets on behalf of its limited
partners and shareholders. Headquartered in Boca Raton,
DigitalBridge has key offices in New York, Los Angeles, London, and
Singapore. For more information, visit: www.digitalbridge.com
Cautionary Statement regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This press release may contain forward-looking statements within
the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking
statements relate to expectations, beliefs, projections, future
plans and strategies, anticipated events or trends and similar
expressions concerning matters that are not historical facts. In
some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the use
of forward-looking terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,”
“expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “believes,”
“estimates,” “predicts,” or “potential” or the negative of these
words and phrases or similar words or phrases which are predictions
of or indicate future events or trends and which do not relate
solely to historical matters. Forward-looking statements involve
known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and
contingencies, many of which are beyond our control, and may cause
actual results to differ significantly from those expressed in any
forward-looking statement. Additional information about these and
other factors can be found in DigitalBridge’s Annual Report on Form
10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021, and its other reports
filed from time to time with the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission (“SEC”). All forward-looking statements reflect
DigitalBridge’s good faith beliefs, assumptions and expectations,
but they are not guarantees of future performance. DigitalBridge
cautions investors not to unduly rely on any forward-looking
statements. The forward-looking statements speak only as of the
date of this press release. DigitalBridge is under no duty to
update any of these forward-looking statements after the date of
this press release, nor to conform prior statements to actual
results or revised expectations, and DigitalBridge does not intend
to do so.
- IDC WorldWide Private LTE/5G Infrastructure Revenue
Snapshot.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220328005292/en/
DigitalBridge Ventures
Alexandre Villela Senior Vice President, DigitalBridge Ventures
alexandre.villela@digitalbridge.com
Celona
Media: Nichols Communications Jay Nichols jay@nicholscomm.com
(408)-504-5487
DigitalBridge
Investors: Severin White Managing Director, Head of Public
Investor Relations severin.white@digitalbridge.com (212)
547-2777
Media: Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher Jon Keehner / Aura
Reinhard (212) 355-4449 DBRG-jf@joelefrank.com
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