Braid raises $38M Series A for branded mobile connectivity

Braid, a company from The Hague that lets businesses sell mobile plans under their own brand, has raised a $38 million Series A led by Octopus Ventures, with KPN Ventures joining, to expand internationally and grow its network of mobile operator partners.

Selling a SIM card under your own name has long been a carrier’s privilege, guarded by wholesale desks and months of contracts. Braid’s founders know that wall from the inside, and they turned it into a company that was profitable before it took a single outside euro. Here is the round, the product and what a cash-flow-positive Series A says about European telecom software.

Octopus Ventures leads Braid’s first outside round

Braid announced the $38 million Series A on October 29, 2026, and startuprise reported the amount as €34.13 million. London’s Octopus Ventures led the round, and KPN Ventures, the investment arm of Dutch operator KPN, took part. It is the company’s first outside capital, and Braid says it was already profitable and cash-flow positive when it closed, according to Tech Funding News.

The money goes to international expansion, a larger network of mobile operator partners and the infrastructure to win share in embedded connectivity, per The SaaS News. Tech Funding News notes that Braid, founded in 2023, previously operated as Next Communications.

A carrier’s own venture arm on the cap table changes the reading of this deal. “Braid has built an impressive platform enabling enterprises to easily embed connectivity into their products,” said Reinout van Ierschot, EVP of KPN Wholesale. Operators have long played gatekeeper to brands that want their own SIM, and now one of them holds a stake in the company that shortens the queue.

Eighteen months for one SIM, three minutes for a trial

Braid gives businesses a single API to more than 600 carriers in over 200 countries, with physical SIM and eSIM, plus a branded storefront to sell plans under their own name. A live trial takes three minutes, and a full launch can take as little as a week, according to FF News.

The founding story explains the product. Co-founder and CEO Jignesh Dave ran a mobile virtual network operator for seven years. A wholesale desk turned him down nine days in a row, and his first branded SIM took 18 months and about €500,000 to reach the market. “I spent 18 months and half a million euros just to sell my first SIM card, and that is why Braid exists,” he said in the announcement.

He co-founded the company with Vishal Dave and Mitesh Popat. Popat spent 18 years at Citi, including as CFO for the Middle East and Africa, before becoming CFO of Flutterwave.

According to Tech Funding News, about 90 enterprises in travel, fintech, clubs and communities, and telecoms sell through Braid, and startuprise reports that the company operates across India, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. None of those customers are named publicly. Each of them is betting that its customers will take a phone plan from a sports club, a travel app or a fintech. Would you?

A $5.8 billion eSIM market by 2030

The global eSIM market was worth $1.2 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $5.8 billion by 2030, a 29.1 percent CAGR, according to the eSIM Global Strategic Business Report from Research and Markets (December 2025). Counterpoint Research, cited by Tech Funding News, expects more than 9 billion devices with eSIM or similar technology to ship between 2024 and 2030, with nearly 70 percent of cellular devices shipped in 2030 supporting eSIM or iSIM.

Those figures size the chip and the software around it. We found no reliable sizing yet for the revenue from plans that brands sell to their own customers, the slice Braid targets.

In our own fundraising data, the nearest sector comparable is Onomondo’s €100 million-plus deal in September, when Aspirity Partners took a majority stake in the Copenhagen IoT operator. Tech Funding News also points to Airalo, valued at $1 billion in July 2025, which has raised almost $287 million to date, and to Roamless, which closed a $12 million Series A in December 2025. Braid’s round is more than three times the size of Roamless’s. With the eSIM market compounding at 29 percent a year, the race is for distribution, and that is where Braid is pointing the money.

Profitable first, funded second

Start with the order of events. By its own account, Braid reached profitability before its first outside check, so the $38 million buys speed and reach, and survival was never part of the pitch.

Then look at who signed. We are a continent of national operators that needed an EU regulation to end roaming charges in 2017, so a Dutch carrier backing a Hague startup that connects brands to more than 600 carriers carries a little irony. I read it as a telco choosing to own a piece of the layer that sits on top of its own wholesale business. Imagine if more of Europe’s incumbent operators did the same with the startups building on their networks, and the nine-day wholesale queue Jignesh Dave sat through became a three-minute signup for the next founder.

From here, we will watch which operators join the partner network, whether any of those customers go public with their branded plans, and how far the expansion money reaches beyond India, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The Hague is better known for its courts than for its carriers. Braid gives it a reason to be known for connectivity too. Let’s watch where the next branded plan comes from!