Particle Acquires Hardware Developer RedBear

IoT platform provider Particle has announced its acquisition of IoT hardware developer RedBear. This is the company’s first-ever acquisition and they say it was done with the goal of helping developers and enterprises bring IoT solutions to market faster. It’s part of their core strategy of IoT innovation investments that accelerate the business of IoT service providers, developers, and manufacturers from prototype to deployment.

China-based RedBear was founded in 2012 and released its early products with the help of Kickstarter crowdfunding. They plan to bring their expertise in WiFi-enabled IoT hardware and Bluetooth Low Energy to Particle’s product lines.

See also: Particle Rolls Out Mesh Networking Hardware

“Particle is committed to building the best team in the business to enable anyone to create IoT solutions that produce real value,” said Zach Supalla, Particle co-founder and CEO. “The RedBear team impressed us with their track record of enabling IoT makers to bring their ideas to life in a third of the time and a tenth of the cost as in the past. This acquisition enables Particle to bring new products to market faster and scale to meet soaring demands for IoT connectivity, adding valuable expertise from the heart of the electronics industry in Shenzhen.”

Particle had already partnered with RedBear on the development and manufacture of Particle Mesh, a portfolio of Mesh Development kits that give IoT systems the power to capture more date with less cost and more reliability. RedBear has also had partnerships with Amazon Web Services and ARM.

“Particle and RedBear share the same laser focus on creating connected solutions that help product creators at any stage create value with IoT,” said Chi-Hung Ma, CEO of RedBear and Particle Director of New Product Development. “Becoming part of Particle will expand our team’s resources to build innovative hardware solutions that better connect anything to the internet. We’re already at work on more game-changing products and look forward to sharing them soon.”