Aspirity Takes Majority Control of Onomondo in €100M Deal

Aspirity Partners agreed on September 30, 2026 to take a majority stake in Onomondo as part of a combined investment of more than €100 million.

The London buyout firm signed a definitive agreement for control of the Copenhagen IoT network company. Denmark’s state fund EIFO, a backer since 2021, will add money alongside the new majority owner. The transaction still needs regulatory approval and is due to close in the first three months of 2027.

Aspirity Buys Control in a €100 Million Combined Deal

This is a change of control dressed in funding-round language. Aspirity is buying a majority of Onomondo ApS, the firm at H. C. Hansens Gade 4 in Copenhagen that runs its own core for machines and sensors. The more than €100 million figure is a combined investment, which mixes the purchase of shares with new capital from EIFO, so the split between a secondary sale and cash onto the balance sheet was not disclosed.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The buyer: Aspirity Partners has a definitive agreement for a majority stake, its first Nordic deal.
• The money: A combined investment of more than €100 million, with EIFO increasing a holding it has had since 2021.
• The timetable: Closing is aimed at the first three months of 2027, after regulatory approval.
• The book: More than 500 businesses in more than 100 countries use the network, including Maersk, Carlsberg, and Husqvarna.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Valuation: No equity value, multiple, or founder residual stake was published with the announcement.
• The split: How much of the more than €100 million is new cash versus a sale of existing shares remains undisclosed.
• Approvals: The companies have not named which regulators must sign off before closing.

Onomondo said the proceeds will fund growth abroad, more network gear, and new products. Co-founder and chief technology officer Henrik Aagaard framed the round as an infrastructure problem, not a SIM problem.

The next challenge is creating the right data and getting it to the right place. That is an infrastructure problem, and it is the problem we have spent eight years solving.

Henrik Aagaard, CTO and co-founder, Onomondo

Chief executive Rasmus Jensen said most rivals sell a basic link and leave the hard operational work with the customer. Onomondo, he said, built one platform that joins the device, the network, and the cloud. That pitch is what Aspirity is paying to own, once the regulators are done.

A First Nordic Check From an €875 Million Fund

Aspirity is a young house. Joseph O’Mara, the managing partner, and Ralph Choufani, co-founder and partner, closed its first fund at over €875 million on November 5, 2025, hitting a hard cap within six months of launch. Aspirity Partners I backs growth buyouts and minority stakes in financial technology and in enterprise technology and connectivity services, writing cheques of €50 million to €150 million for European firms it typically values at up to €500 million.

That last number is Aspirity’s stated hunting range, not a published price for Onomondo. The more than €100 million combined investment sits inside the firm’s usual ticket size only if most of it is Aspirity’s money, which has not been broken out. EIFO’s extra cheque could make Aspirity’s own outlay smaller than the headline.

Choufani said the firm wants platforms that orchestrate devices rather than merely attach them to the internet, and that Onomondo’s end-to-end stack, including control of its own global network, was the reason for the deal. Jensen said Onomondo picked Aspirity because the firm recognised that structure and would back international expansion. For a debut fund raised in 2025, a majority stake in a Danish network operator is a loud first move in the Nordics.

450 Maersk Ships, One Private LTE Core

The industrial fact under the pitch is already at sea. Onomondo and A.P. Moller – Maersk deployed a software-defined LTE core aboard 450 vessels, including 100 time-chartered ships, and described it as the largest private IoT LTE network at sea. Maersk Growth had invested in November 2019 and used the firm first to connect refrigerated containers. The fleet project is the same relationship, scaled from boxes to the ships that carry them.

Onomondo’s May 6, 2025 release said the onboard evolved packet core keeps a private LTE environment running even when satellite links drop. Devices can move between that private network and public terrestrial LTE without a SIM swap. The stack also includes kit from Nokia, 42com Sat, Complea, and ZEDEDA. Installs began in late 2024, timed to scheduled port calls, and were planned to run into 2026, replacing 2G with LTE, LTE-M, and NB-IoT.

WHAT THE SHIPBOARD NETWORK DOES

• Local core: A software LTE core sits on each of the 450 ships so IoT traffic can keep moving when satellite fails.
• Hybrid roam: The same SIM can pass from the private onboard network onto public networks that Onomondo says span nearly 700 operators.
• Inbound SIMs: The setup can take third-party SIMs from other mobile operators, which Onomondo calls a bring-your-own-device model at sea.
• Cargo use: Maersk said the platform is built to support thousands of devices for reefer tracking and fleet IoT.

Maersk’s fleet connectivity upgrade was announced the day before Onomondo’s own note. Kjeld Dittmann, Maersk’s head of vessel and cargo connectivity, said the platform would give customers real-time cargo tracking and better supply-chain visibility. Sonny Wilkens Dahl, Maersk’s global head of ocean operations, later tied that to high-value cargo.

Seeing issues earlier means customers can take action sooner, which is increasingly important when moving high-value and time-sensitive goods.

Sonny Wilkens Dahl, global head of ocean operations, Maersk

A buyout fund can model a network that already sits on 450 working ships. It cannot model a slide about physical AI in the same way. That is the asset being sold.

Why the Stack Starts in Software

Onomondo sells a software SIM, a private wireless core, and a single identity that is meant to work across public and private radio. The company was founded in 2012 by Michael Freundt Karlsen and Henrik Aagaard, both out of the Danish wholesaler Tel42, and launched its own global IoT network in 2018 after years of building core-network projects for other operators. Cloud connectors for AWS and Microsoft Azure arrived in 2020. A network marketplace for more than 680 operators followed in 2022. SoftSIM, a fully software SIM with no plastic card, shipped in November 2022 with module partners including Nordic Semiconductor, Quectel, and SIMCom.

The current deal materials put native access at nearly 700 networks and coverage at over 180 countries. In 2025 the firm launched a private wireless network core so a device can live on a customer’s local radio and then join Onomondo’s public footprint without a new profile. In June 2026 it added factory-preloaded SGP.32 eSIMs with Kigen and an eSIM IoT remote manager so operator profiles can be swapped in the field. Transforma Insights has filed the company among platform players that compete on SoftSIM and a cloud-native stack rather than on a classic MVNO tariff sheet.

Phone networks still punish long-stay roaming, and 2G shutdowns strand older trackers on ships, in yards, and in factories. A software SIM plus an onboard core is a way around both problems, because the identity and the packet core travel with the asset. That is also why this looks less like a SIM reseller to a private equity screen and more like a network business with switching costs.

A 115% Year, Then a New Chief Executive

The company was already scaling before Aspirity arrived. Onomondo named Rasmus Jensen chief executive in 2025, on March 5, and said revenue rose 115% in 2024 after an 84% rise in 2023. Karlsen, who had been chief executive until early 2025 and was previously chief financial officer at the game studio Playdead, moved to a co-founder brief on large partnerships. Jensen joined from Templafy, where he spent eight years building the commercial team past 100 people and helping raise more than $100 million; he also had seven years in leadership jobs at TDC, Denmark’s main telecom group.

ONOMONDO BEFORE THE SALE

• 2024 revenue: Up 115%, following an 84% rise in 2023, per the March 2025 leadership note.
• Customers: More than 500 businesses as of the September 2026 deal, in more than 100 countries.
• Prior cash: A $21 million Verdane-led round in July 2022, with Maersk Growth, People Ventures, and the Danish Growth Fund, taking total funds raised above $26 million at that date.
• Proof account: 450 Maersk ships on a private LTE core, with rollout from late 2024 into 2026.

The 2022 round was ordinary growth equity. Karlsen said then that Onomondo was adding about 50 customers a quarter and planned to take headcount from 50 toward 100. Bosch sat on the customer list beside Carlsberg and Maersk. In March 2025 the company even said it already had the capital it needed for further growth. Eighteen months later the founders are selling majority control anyway, which is the tell that this round is about ownership and a longer international push, not a rescue.

Jillian Falconi, formerly of Brandwatch, Trustpilot, and Saxo Bank, is chief commercial officer. Nicolai Troensegaard, from TDC Group and Nuuday, is chief financial officer. Jorgen Smidt of Heartcore Capital chairs the board, with People Ventures’ Claus Zibrandtsen among the directors. The operating bench Aspirity is inheriting was built for a scale-up, then a buyout arrived on top of it.

IoT Connectivity Joins the Buyout Circuit

Cellular IoT has been a crowded trade of mobile operators, specialist MVNOs, and a smaller set of firms that own software cores. Gartner-style shortlists still run through Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, AT&T, and Telefónica on the operator side, and through 1NCE, emnify, Eseye, floLIVE, Soracom, Pelion, and Wireless Logic on the specialist side. Onomondo’s claim is that it is not reselling those networks so much as plugging into radio at the RAN and running its own core, which is the piece PE can try to standardise across other industrial fleets.

WHERE THE MONEY IS MOVING

• Operator IoT units: National carriers still hold the radio and the big automotive and meter books.
• Classic MVNOs: 1NCE, emnify, Eseye, and peers sell global SIMs and a management portal on top of wholesale airtime.
• Platform cores: Onomondo, floLIVE, and a few others sell the software network itself, including private cores and eSIM orchestration.
• Buyout owners: Wireless Logic has long been PE-backed; KORE agreed in 2026 to go private.

First Analysis, in its June 2026 IoT note, put KORE’s take-private near $726 million, or about 2.4 times estimated 2026 revenue, with Searchlight Capital Partners and Abry Partners buying the rest of the equity. That deal took a listed connectivity specialist off the public market. Onomondo is smaller and still private, but the pattern is the same: the connectivity layer is being recapitalised as a control investment, not as a venture experiment.

If Aspirity’s thesis holds, the next useful copy of the Maersk build is another operator with a large moving fleet, a factory group, or a utilities book that wants a private radio that can still hit a public network when the asset leaves the yard. If it does not, Aspirity will own a majority of a company whose flagship remains one shipping line.

When the Onomondo Deal Is Expected to Close

Nothing transfers until regulators clear the file and the first quarter of 2027 arrives. Until then Onomondo stays under its present cap table, with EIFO already on it and Maersk still both a customer and, through Maersk Growth, a historic investor. Aspirity will have to live with an eight-year product cycle, a SoftSIM that module makers have to ship, and a private-core rollout that only works if someone climbs aboard 450 hulls in port.

The announcement left the equity value, the cash-in versus cash-out mix, and the founders’ remaining stake off the page. Those figures will surface, if they surface, in filings around closing. For now the public fact is simpler. A first-fund European buyout firm is taking majority control of a Danish network company whose best-known installation is already at sea, and the state of Denmark is putting more money in rather than stepping off.