Onomondo investment: the deal in brief
The Onomondo investment announced on 30 September 2026 hands majority control of the Copenhagen IoT connectivity company to Aspirity Partners, a London-based private equity firm investing across Europe. Aspirity is leading a combined investment that Onomondo puts at more than €100 million. EIFO, the Danish state investment fund that has backed the company since 2021, is increasing its stake alongside the new owner.
The money is a mix of fresh capital for the business and the purchase of existing shares. Verdane, which led Onomondo's $21 million growth round in 2022, sells out as part of the transaction. Nobody has disclosed a valuation, and the deal still needs regulatory approval before it closes.
| Item | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer | Aspirity Partners, majority stake under a signed definitive agreement | Onomondo announcement |
| Size | Combined investment above €100 million | Onomondo announcement |
| Co-investor | EIFO, increasing an investment first made in 2021 | Onomondo announcement |
| Structure | Mix of primary capital and secondary share purchases | RCR Wireless News |
| Exiting investor | Verdane, lead investor in the 2022 growth round | RCR Wireless News |
| Valuation | Not disclosed | RCR Wireless News |
| Completion | Subject to regulatory approval, expected Q1 2027 | The Next Web |
| Use of funds | International expansion, infrastructure deployment, proprietary technology | Onomondo announcement |
| Leadership | Rasmus Jensen continues as CEO; co-founders Henrik Aagaard and Michael Karlsen stay on the board | RCR Wireless News |
Who is buying, and what Onomondo brings
Aspirity is a young firm. It closed its first fund, Aspirity Partners I, in November 2025 at just over €875 million, with a stated focus on fintech and on enterprise technology and connectivity services. Its typical cheque is €50 million to €150 million into businesses valued at up to €500 million. Onomondo is its first investment in the Nordic region, according to Aspirity's founder Joseph O'Mara.
Onomondo was founded in 2012 by Henrik Aagaard and Michael Karlsen and launched commercially in 2018. The company says it has more than 500 customers in over 100 countries, including Maersk, Carlsberg and Husqvarna, and native access to nearly 700 mobile networks. Its best-known deployment is with Maersk: a private LTE network covering more than 450 vessels, which Onomondo describes as the largest private LTE network at sea in the world. That is the company's own claim, not an independently audited ranking. Aagaard told RCR Wireless News that each vessel carries its own radio site and an onboard core, with devices moving onto public 4G and 5G when in range.
Infrastructure, not airtime: where the capital is going
The more interesting story is what kind of IoT business is attracting nine-figure money. Onomondo does not pitch itself as an IoT MVNO. It positions against that model, arguing that its own core network, SoftSIM, cloud connectors and mix of public and private networks give enterprises a level of control that resold airtime cannot. In its interview with RCR Wireless News, Aagaard summed up the difference in one line: "We are not reselling access to a network."
He also told RCR that connectivity data is a small share of revenue compared with infrastructure services, and that the platform is priced as the control panel for that infrastructure. Whether or not every rival accepts the distinction, the logic for an investor is clear. Airtime is a commodity that competes on price per megabyte. An owned core, integrations into customer systems and a management platform that sits in every device estate are harder to replace, and that stickiness is exactly what a buyout firm pays for.
Aspirity's partners frame the deal around physical AI, the idea that devices will increasingly sense and act at the edge and need always-on, controllable connectivity to do it. Aagaard was more measured. He told RCR that physical AI remains largely a future opportunity and is small in scale today. Buyers should read the AI framing as the investment thesis, not as a description of current demand.
The eIM layer is now the competitive ground
Two weeks before the deal was announced, on 16 September 2026, Onomondo launched its own SGP.32 eSIM IoT Remote Manager (eIM), the component that controls which operator profiles sit on each device. The notable detail is that the eIM can be used with Onomondo connectivity or with another provider's. We covered the launch and its limits in our report on Onomondo's SGP.32 eIM.
That launch matters for reading this investment. SGP.32 makes the operations for changing an eIM's configuration mandatory on the eUICC, but it does not force any vendor to make its own eIM replaceable. Lock-in has not disappeared under SGP.32; it has moved. It now sits in the eIM and the integrations built against its API, in the eUICC operating system fixed at manufacture, and in whoever supplies the bootstrap profile. The full map of where it goes is set out in SGP.32 and operator lock-in on sgp32.co.uk.
The provider that runs the eIM holds the control plane for an entire fleet, whichever networks the profiles point at. That is a better business than selling the profiles, and it is where the value in the SGP.32 orchestration stack is heading. Onomondo's bet is that an open, configurable eIM wins more fleets than a closed one keeps. The new owner now inherits that bet.
One technical point is easy to blur. Aagaard confirmed to RCR that Onomondo's SoftSIM currently runs UICC logic and is not compatible with SGP.32. SoftSIM and eUICC are separate products for separate use cases, and its SGP.32 eSIMs come through a partnership with Kigen. Buyers should evaluate each on its own terms.
Onomondo built its brand on the promise that customers are free to leave. A change of majority owner does not alter existing contracts, but it does bring new commercial priorities over the life of a fleet that may run for ten years or more. The configurable eIM is the right design. Its value to a buyer depends on exit terms written into the contract, not on the brand promise.
What it means for IoT buyers
Nothing changes yet
The transaction is not expected to complete until Q1 2027 and remains subject to regulatory approval. Existing Onomondo customers should see no change to service in the meantime, and the CEO and co-founders are staying.
Judge the exit, not the badge
If you are evaluating Onomondo, or any SGP.32 provider, ask to see the exit in practice. Who else can operate the eIM managing your estate, how eUICC registrations are exported, what a migration costs and how long it takes. Get the answers in writing before signing.
Read the change-of-control and pricing clauses
Ownership changes are a sensible moment to check what your contract says about price reviews, notice periods and assignment. This applies to every provider in a consolidating market, not only Onomondo.
Design the device for the long haul
For new hardware, the eUICC decisions made at the factory will outlast any connectivity contract. SGP.32 v1.2 remains the certification baseline, even though v1.3 was published on 28 May 2026. Ask for the tested combination of eUICC, eIM and SM-DP+ on your actual router or module firmware, and plan for a 15-year device life as described in future-proof IoT eSIM design on euicc.co.uk.
