The Richardson, Texas-based telecommunications software company Mavenir has closed a $100 million funding round, to enhance its Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation capabilities. This follows a successful $250 capital raise in 2022.

According to the announcement, the funding was led by Siris and will be used to finance Mavenir’s “innovation-focused strategy.” This is an approach that the cloud computing company is using to enable the “digitization of telco networks with cloud-native applications that include IMS, Converged Packet Core and Open RAN.”

Notably, Siris is a leading private equity firm that focuses on investments in data and telecommunications, technology, and technology-enabled business service. As Mavenir’s largest equity holder, Siris played an important part in the tech company’s latest raise alongside “two highly strategic ecosystem partners,” according to Mavenir.

Mavenir Total Capital Raise Now Stands At $950 Million

The new round builds upon Mavenir’s past successful fundraisers. Last year, the company raised $95 million in the summer and another portion of $155 million in October, led by Siris and Koch Strategic Platforms.

Before those tranches, Koch placed a big bet on Mavenir, investing $500 million in the company in April 2021. This brings to%950 million the total Mavenir has raised to date.

Commenting on the latest raise, President and CEO of Mavenir Pardeep Kohli said:

This new capital will allow us to accelerate our capabilities in automation, sustainability, and use of AI as we enable our customers to efficiently deploy and operate Open RAN based end-to-end cloud-native networks.

Kohli also pointed out that Mavenir’s “unique strategy incorporates best practices from the hyperscale, cloud and IT industries, to transform how the world connects and builds the future of networks.”

The telecommunications software company has spent $500 million in RAN development to date and expects this year to bring more opportunities, said the Mavenir CEO.

According to Kohli, Mavenir is the third largest non-Chinese entity with “software end-to-end mobile networks that include radio, baseband, packet core, voice, and messaging.

According to a January report by Dell’Oro Group, Open RAN 2023 revenues are expected to accelerate at a faster pace than initially expected. The research firm has projected that Open RAN will comprise 6-10% of the global RAN market in 2023, with the figure expected to rise to 15-20%, over the next five years.

An excerpt from the report reads:

The Open RAN movement has come a long way in just a few years, propelling Open RAN revenues to accelerate at a faster pace than initially expected. Going into 2022, we projected Open RAN would comprise around 3% of the full-year 2022 market. Per our 3Q22 RAN report, our analysis indicates Open RAN revenues surged at a much steeper pace than expected spurring Open RAN to comprise a mid-single digit share of the full-year capex.

Reinforcing Kohli’s comments, Hubert de Pesquidoux, a Siris executive partner who is also chairman of Mavenir said that the funding was important because it will help Mavenir “to further scale its business and maintain its leadership in Open RAN and 5G transformation.”

de Pesquidoux added:

We firmly believe in the automated networks of the future that are cloud-native, AI-native and Green-native, and we are confident that Mavenir’s innovations are essential in driving that evolution.

Mavenir has used some of its cash to be acquisitive in the past, making a total of eight deals since 2011, according to data from Crunchbase.

However, the company has only made two deals since 2020, acquiring U.K.-based cell solution developer ip.access in 2020 and Austin, Texas-based open-source communications platform Telestax in 2021.

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