Highway 9's CEO told Fierce that their software highly automates private deployment
Their showcase customer is MIT
2025 looks to be a more promising year for private network startups
Highway 9 tops our list as one of the private wireless startups to watch in 2025. The Santa Clara, California-based company, which launched in February 2024, has developed a Mobile Cloud platform that is intended to simplify and automate the deployment of 4G and 5G private networks.
The Founder and CEO of Highway 9, Allwyn Sequeira, told Fierce on a call Monday that the company has deployed an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled private cellular network on eight floors of the Schwarzman College of Computing building on the MIT campus.
“People don’t realize how complicated it is to set up private cellular,” Sequeira stated. “Setting up the inter-frequencies, setting up the different channels.” He noted that an organization would have to provision SIM cards for various devices, as well as securely link the network to cloud resources.
“We automated all of that,” he said, touting that the difference with the Highway 9 technology is that it is a lot more automated and cloud-native than that offered by big private wireless vendors like Nokia and Ericsson.
Mark Weiner, CMO at Highway 9, said that the startup wasn’t allowed to name its other customers yet but noted that they had other clients like an unnamed manufacturing firm.
Analysts on the highway
Asad Khan, the 5G research director at SNS Telecom & IT noted that his firm had heard of at least one more named client for Highway 9. “We are aware of their involvement in a Comcast-supplied private wireless project at the Arlen Specter US Squash Center, supporting connectivity for point-of-sale systems, enhancing fan engagement, access controls and other applications," he said.
“We're watching them and seeing how their positioning around a higher level of abstraction in their virtual mobile zones will play out,” Roy Chua at AvidThink told Fierce Network. “They've indicated that they will use partner solutions for the underlying connectivity technology (radios, core, etc.), at least for now., which contrasts with some of the other players in the space.”
Highway 9 has pulled in $25 million in venture funding so far, with a Series A led by Mayfield.
“Highway 9 is on the list of private networking startups that we're tracking,” Chua added. “As well as other more established startups like Celona, and upstarts like Meter who have recently announced a cellular product, as well as Ramen Networks with a managed private wireless solution and Ataya (focused on industrial, critical communications), Kajeet (showing traction in the education, healthcare, and public sector space).”
Get ready because 2025 looks to be the year for the ascendence of 5G private networking.