Veea Inc.

Our CEO and Chairman Allen Salmasi. 40-year veteran of the communications industry who helped develop the CDMA protocol and was once one of Qualcomm’s biggest shareholders. Salmasi went on to found NextWave Telecom, which famously bid $4.7 billion for PCS spectrum in 1996 and then sold it to Verizon in 2005. Salmasi then started NextWave Wireless, which among other activities acquired firms like PacketVideo and IPWireless.

After selling NextWave Wireless’ spectrum to AT&T in 2013, Salmasi with his son Michael started Max2, which launched an edge computing server called VeeaHub in 2018. Max2 changed its name to Veea later that year, and then purchased Virtuosys for its mobile edge computing platform.

The product. VeeaHub hardware is a box roughly the size of a Wi-Fi router that can connect to on-premises devices via LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, LoRa, Zigbee, Ethernet, USB or legacy protocols like RS232. Later this year Veea plans to add 5G and 802.11ax to the mix. The company has three VeeaHub models: one for homes or small businesses, one for enterprise customers, and one for outdoor use. All can be managed with a smartphone app.

Since the VeeaHubs can use cellular for backhaul, the company is marketing them as solutions for pop-up networks as well as more permanent installations. They’re sold as a service, starting at $20 per month per box. Veea’s team believes customers will see the value as they realize that the VeeaHub can function as an LTE router, a public Wi-Fi access point, an IoT gateway and firewall, a Bluetooth receiver and beacon, and a Linux VPN server.

Growth.