Google Invests in Meraki
Google Invests in Meraki
GigOm reports that Google is investing in Meraki, the $50 wireless mesh client based on the MIT’s Roofnet project.
Meraki’s co-founder Sanjit Biswas tells us that the company completed a bridge round of funding last week, which included Google and “a few Silicon Valley angels.” Biswas wouldn’t specify the amount but said the round was under a million dollars. “We’d bootstrapped the company so far, so this cash is really
just for growth/acceleration . . .and for the development of some products we plan to launch next year,” says Biswas.
At a San Francisco WiFi community meeting Google showed off a Meraki router as a good, inexpensive way for residents to extend San Francisco’s planned city-wide WiFi network indoors.
Google’s Chris Sacca told us last month that Google was partly interested in Meraki to help the company keep its products running on an open platform. Meraki’s current product, the Meraki Minis, use an open platform and the company is encouraging users to tinker around and install their own software.
Meraki says their goal is to enable a grassroots movement of small wireless ISPs by providing them everything they need to get started.
Google is said to have made a “relatively small” six-figure investment in the Mountain View, Calif., startup. “They’re devloping an in-house customer premises equipment unit that can also mesh,” an industry source told Unstrung. Google may test the box with businesses that are within its Mountain View WiFi mesh coverage area.
MIT’s RoofNet software is also embedded in the $150 computer developed by One Laptop Per Child (wikipedia).
The project received its first shipment of the low-cost Linux laptops this week, project member Chris Blizzard reports on his blog.
Related DailyWireless open source articles include; CUWiN + Meraki Client, Solar RoofNet Wiki, and Open Source Routers.