Geolocation companies consolidate as NextNav acquires Nestwave

NextNav Inc., a GPS and 3D geolocation company, has acquired Nestwave SAS, a privately held company specializing in low-power geolocation.

The acquisition was completed Oct. 31 for $18 million.

NextNav is based in McLean, Virginia, and Nestwave is located in based in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Nestwave provides advanced geolocation solutions to internet of things  (I0T) modem and digital signal processor vendors and end IoT users.

Nestwave will adopt NextNav’s name and be integrated into existing TerraPoiNT engineering and technology efforts, with all Nestwave employees remaining with the company. Nestwave CEO Ambroise Popper will become NextNav’s vice president and general manager in France and is joining NextNav’s executive leadership team, while Nestwave CTO and Founder Rabih Chrabieh will serve as vice president of engineering.

The combination of NextNav’s technology with Nestwave’s LTE/5G capabilities will allow NextNav to intelligently combine signals from existing terrestrial LTE/5G networks with its own highly synchronized TerraPoiNT system to deliver near nationwide resilient 3D position, navigation and timing (PNT) capabilities that contribute to dramatically lower deployment costs.

The company serves markets including timing for critical infrastructure, aviation, automotive, IoT and other mass market applications sooner.

“The acquisition of Nestwave presents a unique opportunity for NextNav to optimize further the use of its existing spectrum bandwidth, while contributing to a drastic decrease of our TerraPoiNT system’s future capital and operating expenditures,” said Ganesh Pattabiraman, NextNav co-founder and CEO.

“By leveraging Nestwave’s unique technology and ambient LTE/5G waveform, NextNav can gain significant spectral efficiency, accelerate the availability of resilient PNT and release the underlying spectrum’s capacity for additional data-oriented services. An LTE/5G waveform also enables broader penetration of NextNav’s applications and technology across the handset and device ecosystem for all of its products and target markets,” Pattabiraman said.

Pattabiraman continued, “Nestwave brings not only a physical presence in Europe, but also a team of professionals who have established strong relationships with European Union representatives that will be beneficial as we continue active conversations with government officials in the United States, Europe and globally over GPS/GNSS resilience.

“The transaction is not expected to materially increase the company’s operational cash burn, and the lowered capital requirements will enable us to quickly scale our GPS resiliency capabilities in both the United States and global markets sooner than previously anticipated.”

NextNav posted a pre-recorded conference call to discuss the acquisition.