Braid, a company based in The Hague that sells mobile connectivity as software to other businesses, has raised a Series A round reported as $38 million, or €34.13 million. Octopus Ventures led the round, and KPN Ventures, the investment arm of the Dutch telecom operator KPN, also took part, according to the company’s announcement and Dutch and European technology outlets. Braid, formerly called Next Communications, says the money is its first outside capital since it launched in 2023 and that it is profitable and cash-flow positive. Dealroom, citing Axios Pro, reported the deal on October 28, and the company announced it on October 29.

What Braid does

Braid lets companies offer mobile service under their own brand without becoming telecom operators. According to the company, a single programming interface connects to more than 600 carrier networks in more than 200 countries. A business can add SIM and eSIM connectivity to its own product through that interface or a software kit, or launch a branded online storefront that needs no coding. The company says a live trial can be set up in three minutes and a branded mobile launch can take as little as a week.

The examples the company gives are consumer-facing. An airline or travel agent could supply connectivity from booking until the traveler gets home, a bank could reward customers with mobile data, and a sports club could keep traveling supporters connected. In the company’s telling, brands that weave connectivity into their customer experience gain closer relationships, more loyalty and extra income.

The company contrasts this with the usual route. It says becoming a connectivity provider has traditionally meant months of procurement and carrier negotiations lasting three to six months. Braid says it serves enterprises only, not consumers, and that it has close to 90 enterprise customers, including major global fintech and travel brands. It names none of them, and none of the sources reviewed gives revenue, profit or customer-level figures.

The round and the investors

The amount appears in two currencies. The company’s release says $38 million, while The Cap Table, which summarizes a report by EU-Startups, gives €34.13 million. Startup.eu lists the headline as $38 million and the deal snapshot as €34.1 million. The EU-Startups report itself could not be opened for this article, and its web address spells the euro figure as 34.12, so the exact euro amount may differ by a rounding step. The two headline numbers imply roughly $1.11 per euro, which is Lens arithmetic.

Octopus Ventures is a London-based investor that describes itself as part of Octopus Investments and as one of the largest and most active venture capital investors in Europe. Uthish Ranjan, a partner at the firm, said in the release that “The best infrastructure businesses make something complex feel effortless.” He added that the Braid team has taken an industry built around long negotiations and fragmented systems and made it simpler for businesses to embed connectivity. The Cap Table quotes him as saying Braid is defining a new category in embedded connectivity.

KPN is also a supplier. The release says KPN Wholesale is Braid’s connectivity partner, and Reinout van Ierschot, an EVP at KPN Wholesale, said in the release that KPN supports Braid’s next phase of growth. The sources do not describe the commercial terms between the two companies. Lens analysis: an investor that is also a network supplier gives Braid a strategic backer, and it is a relationship readers may want to see described in more detail as the company grows.

According to the company, the proceeds will pay for international expansion, a deeper carrier network and infrastructure to win more of the embedded connectivity market. The Cap Table reports that the company wants to become the default infrastructure for enterprise connectivity globally. It describes operations across India, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The company’s release gives a headquarters in The Hague and an office in London.

The founder’s story

Jignesh Dave is the founder and chief executive. According to the release, he worked in banking in the United Kingdom and South Africa, including at Lloyds, and then ran a mobile virtual network operator, a company that sells mobile service over other carriers’ networks, for seven years. Dave says it took 18 months and half a million euros just to sell his first SIM card, and that this is why Braid exists. The Cap Table lists Vishal Dave and Mitesh Popat as the other founders and gives no roles for them.

Dave also argues that his years running the operator taught him the business was not really selling SIM cards, but providing infrastructure that makes connectivity accessible. He compares it with Amazon building cloud services to run its own business and then finding that the same technology could serve others. That is the company’s account of its own origin, and no outside source in this report verifies it.

A crowded field

Dealroom, summarizing the Axios Pro report, says the market is getting crowded as established apps add eSIM services. Its own analysis is that Braid’s success will depend on whether it can differentiate itself and win customers. Dealroom also points to two other companies in the field: eSIM Go, which won strategic backing in May with no amount disclosed, and Roamless, which its article says raised $12 million in late 2025, although a data panel on the same page shows $19 million.

Airalo is the best-known name in the consumer version of the business. Earthsims, a site that reviews travel eSIMs and discloses that it earns commissions on purchases, reports that Airalo says it passed 30 million customers in June 2026, up from 20 million about a year earlier. It also reports that Airalo raised a $220 million Series C in July 2025 at a valuation above $1 billion. Both numbers come from the company through that site, and Airalo’s own release was not reviewed.

Estimates of the market’s size vary widely with what is counted. Earthsims cites Grand View Research for a total eSIM market of $11.9 billion in 2025 and Fortune Business Insights for a narrower embedded-SIM technology market of $1.76 billion in 2025, and it notes that most of the larger total is machine connectivity in cars, meters and industrial devices rather than travel eSIMs. It also cites Kaleido Intelligence for a projection of $3.3 billion in travel-eSIM retail spending in 2025. These are second-hand figures, and none measures Braid’s own segment directly.

Braid’s pitch is also made by larger providers. In a November 2025 blog post, 1GLOBAL, a telecom and eSIM provider, argued that embedded telecom services have become a common retention tool for fintech, travel and consumer technology brands, and that travel eSIMs and full mobile-operator services are likely to merge in packaged offers it calls MVNO-in-a-Box. The post is marketing for 1GLOBAL and its forecasts are the company’s own, but it shows that the model Braid sells is already being offered by competitors.

What to watch

Braid’s profitability, customer count and carrier numbers are all company claims, and no source reviewed gives revenue or margins. Lens analysis: a Series A raised by a company that says it is profitable suggests the money is meant to speed up expansion rather than extend a runway, which is how the company itself describes its plans.

The next details to look for are named customers, the countries Braid enters first and whether the KPN relationship changes as it adds carriers. Pricing against rivals that sell the same service through an interface will also matter, because the Dealroom analysis puts differentiation at the center of the outlook.

Sources

Image: Bright skyline of The Hague (Unsplash).jpg by Gerrit Vermeulen gerritvermeulen, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Illustrative photo; it does not show the events described.