The 180 employees of Sigfox, the French flagship of the Internet of Things, will soon be fixed on their fate. The commercial court of Toulouse will deliver this Thursday the identity of the future buyer of the company based in Labège. It could well be UnaBiz, a company specializing in the Internet of Things, which today operates the 0G network of the French company in Asia. Registered in Singapore, this company founded and run by two French entrepreneurs – including a former Sigfox employee – is a favorite in the eyes of the company’s CSE.
For some of the employees of Sigfox, it will indeed be able to take advantage of its “perfect knowledge” of the “problems of Sigfox and its ecosystem”, argued the CSE of the company in an open letter published on April 12. The body also puts forward “a corporate culture close to that of Sigfox, which reduces the risk of a talent drain”, to justify its position.
However, the origin of the Asian company raises the question of the maintenance in France of the 0G technology developed by Sigfox and makes the CSE of Sigfox fear political deadlocks in the context of the in-between rounds of the presidential election.
The CEO of Unabiz, Henri Bong, said at the end of last week “ready to study the relocation of the head office of UnaBiz in France”, assuring moreover that a French subsidiary – UnaBiz SAS – “has already been registered Start of the week [dernière, NDLR] in the commercial register of Toulouse”. It remains to be seen whether the good intentions displayed by the leader of UnaBiz, also a former employee of Sigfox, will be enough to dispel Bercy’s fears. According to certain sources familiar with the matter, Unabiz has undertaken to retain 110 employees out of the 180 employed by Sigfox, as well as the 17 employees of Sigfox SAS.
The Sigfox file scrutinized very closely
UnaBiz is not alone in the running, however. Another player seems determined to play the win, in this case the French consulting and engineering company OTEIS, specializing in building, water, environment and infrastructure.
Its CEO, Rafi Kouyoumdjian, assures him: his offer “is better off on the social level”. “We are taking on 127 people in France”, he indicates, while specifying that “financial support for employees taken over is 50% higher than the second.” In total, the offer made by OTEIS includes the renewal of 18 employees of Sigfox France and 109 employees of Sigfox SAS, the structure overseeing Sigfox’s international activities.
With a long experience acquired in particular in the telecom sector, the manager plans to invest 18 million euros in Sigfox in order to develop Sigfox’s 0G technology and intends to multiply synergies in the field of construction, thanks to partnerships already established in this sector by OTEIS. “We want to develop the uses that can be made around Sigfox technology, for us it is a very important asset to safeguard and grow,” said Rafi Kouyoumdjian, interviewed by ZDNet.
For the latter, it is also a question of maintaining the assets of Sigfox on French territory. “With our offer, we can be sure that the Sigfox technology will remain in France, simply because our shareholders and our governance are French”, argues the manager, for whom “it would be a shame to see the more than 400 million euros invested by France to go abroad”. “It’s really an important issue, Sigfox’s technology is a French asset of which we can be proud and which we would like to preserve and strengthen. »
An issue of technological sovereignty
A position shared by a third player in the running, namely Actility. The IoT operator specializing in LPWAN LTE and LoraWAN technologies intends to invest “more than 32 million euros to continue to develop the SigFox technology in France and to conduct a project to converge LPWAN standards offering a long-lasting and standardized interface capable of to use on a case-by-case basis the different LoRa, LoRa-FHSS, SigFox or other technologies (particularly satellite modulations)”.
In a press release published on Tuesday, the company chaired by Olivier Hersent indicates “hope that this little piece of French genius that is Sigfox will remain fully sovereign, at least for the scope of its dual activities… which means that the control and beneficial owners remain French”. It is therefore a question of French technological sovereignty, it is argued on the side of Actility, which summons to support its remarks the memory of the acquisition of the Grenoble-based company Cycleo – at the origin of the LoRa technology – by the Californian company Semtech in 2012, and the resulting technology transfer.
“Whoever is ultimately selected, we wish from the bottom of our hearts the best future to the SigFox teams, who invented the concept of 0G and who deserve that the adventure continues. We will contribute as much as possible, alone or with the partner who will lead the destiny of this nugget from Toulouse”, says the management of Actility. To the Commercial Court of Toulouse to decide.
As a reminder, after a few years of turmoil, the French flagship Sigfox was placed in receivership by the same court at the end of January. The company, whose IoT 0G technology is mainly used for asset tracking services (i.e. the location and logistics tracking of objects) or connectivity backup, has borne the brunt of the health crisis. , the shortage of semiconductors and – above all – increased competition in recent years, forcing it to revise its ambitions downwards and sell off several of its international networks.