$20.3 million was raised in an investment round led by Samsung’s investment fund by Afero, a start-up that describes itself as the “nervous system” sitting in the middle of the internet of things (IoT) world.

The investment which was led by Samsung Catalyst fund, and joined by Presidio Ventures, Sanshin Electronics, SoftBank, Fenox Venture Capital, Assembly Fund, and Robert Dobkin was announced very recently by the U.S. -based firm, founded by Joe Britt, a former employee working on Google’s Android operating system (OS).

According to IDC, the IoT industry could see revenues hit $7 trillion by 2020 and Afero is looking to become the center of the industry.

The process with current internet of things devices is fragmented, explains Britt. Issues like what kind of hardware to use, what OS to put on the device, how it will connect to the cloud needs to be decided separately. It requires separate teams who need to co-ordinate their development.

“Because all this work was done manually, there was more risk of human error, it’s clumsy,” Britt told CNBC.

A chip that would enable any product to connect to the company’s cloud and can be embedded by the manufacturer in to the product is sold by Afero. This would allow developers to create cloud apps as the companies can get analytics, security and access to Afero’s so-called application program interface (API).

It is essentially trying to sit in the middle of several IoT devices.

“The way I think about it is there are a number of things that are hot – artificial intelligence, IoT, robotics, those are interesting because they fit together as a system. AI is the brain function, robotics and sensory as analogues of our human senses. Afero meanwhile is building the nervous system,” Britt told CNBC.

Afero could potentially carry out a role that is similar to Android and iOS which have become the dominant operating systems and the backbone of the vast majority of the world’s mobile devices. It could make it more attractive for developers to build applications if large numbers of devices use its cloud.

“Rather than being the domain of companies that have the resources to build this we have created a tool to get many more developers to build IoT devices,” Britt said.

(Source:www.cnbc.com)