In April, Dallas-based Taubyte emerged from stealth as a smart computing platform that enables scaling software to global infrastructure catalyzed by 5G and IoT. Now, huge innovators in the space are already taking notice.

Taubyte was chosen this month to join the second cohort of the selective 5G Open Innovation Lab founded by T-Mobile, Intel, and NASA. Early- and later-stage startups that secured coveted spots will work directly with 5G mentors to accelerate innovation in markets like agritech, edge computing, AI, and mobility.

Then, the startup won the Best Application of Edge Technology Award at the Cambridge Wireless Technology and Innovation Awards 2020. The inaugural awards, announced this week, celebrated companies that the CW team determined had the most impactful use cases within the industry.

“For the world, this is a validation of the problem we’re trying to solve, and the solution we’re building,” Taubyte Founder and CEO Samy Fodil said in an email to Dallas Innovates. “Thus, helping with acquiring customers and expediting the fundraising process.”

The two feats represent quick recognition for a startup founded in September 2019 and emerging from stealth just months later. And Fodil’s team is doing it all from the Venture X coworking space at the Galleria (which also happened to be one of its early pilots).

Taubyte takes DevOps to NoOps

Ashwin Mistry, the startup’s co-founder and COO, believes Dallas-Fort Worth is positioning itself as a leading tech hub. Mistry said Taubyte is doing its part to represent the region.

The startup is building up a niche in edge computing, with the intent to claim an area they call “smart computing.” The idea is to put powerful tech and automation behind the scenes so people can focus on their businesses, he said.

With Taubyte’s edge computing platform, Mistry told Dallas Innovates, the complexity around software development, deployment, and routing is greatly reduced. It does so by streamlining the ability to build scalable, highly-distributed software for IoT. 

In turn, that fully automated technology allows IoT developers to focus on product features, which reduces costs and time to market.

Most people are familiar with the idea of DevOps. But, Founder Fodil and his team think IoT solutions need to be simpler for businesses.

“With the rise of IoT and 5G, the operational problem related to their scale will be obvious even on small projects,” he said. “We estimate the total addressable market opportunity to grow to over $200 billion by 2025.”

That’s why Taubyte has developed a “NoOps” computing platform: “There are just too many Ops,” Fodil said. “And it doesn’t scale in a 5G world.” The startup developed its smart computing platform to make it easier for businesses to adopt IoT and infrastructure software.  

“From bare-metal servers to containers and today’s serverless approach, software stack abstraction has significantly reduced operational (AKA Ops) cost, time to market, and product life-cycle,” Fodil explained. “With the emergence of edge computing fueled by IoT and 5G, the software operational overhead is growing exponentially, and the current code-based automation (AKA DevOps) will not scale.”

Founder Samy Fodil, shown here in a YouTube video: “We believe that “smart computing” is going to be the dial tone of every modern organization.”

Taubyte currently is not generating revenue, but a couple of pilots will be going into production in the coming months, he said. It plans to hire more employees as a funding round is closed; currently, Taubyte is bootstrapped by Fodil.

One of Taubyte’s current pilots is an industrial sensor manufacturer, which was working to augment its sensors with edge computing to answer a market demand driven by Industry 4.0.

The manufacturer tried multiple approaches: The first was a failure, Fodil said, as they went after tech that was hard to automate. Then, the manufacturer attempted to leverage docker containers, but found it was a huge and expensive operational overhead.

“At [this] point, they started looking for a turnkey Edge Computing solution that let them focus on their business logic,” he said. “This is how we onboarded them.”

Up next month, Taubyte is planning to open access to its platform. By the end of this week, sign-ups for early-access will be open.

Fodil defines success for Taubyte in the next two to three years as having a global presence and reaching $6 million in annual recurring revenue.

He sees smart computing as becoming an established category and looks forward to a democratization of IoT that is noticeable by everyone—the future is in smart houses, smart cities, smart manufacturing, and more, he said.

The 5G Open Innovation Lab should give the startup that boost Mistry and the team are hoping for.

Taubyte joins T-Mobile’s 5G Open Innovation Lab

Founding partners Intel, T-Mobile, NASA, and others will work closely with the Taubyte team, which includes Founder and CEO Fodil, along with Co-founder and COO Mistry, Co-founder and VP of Engineering Moncef Mebarkia, and Co-founder and Head of Marketing Youssouf Hamada, as part of the 5G Open Innovation Lab.

The startup’s goal is to mature and grow its platform to “become the de facto computing platform for IoT.”

“The 5G Open Innovation Lab will help us explore use cases and co-development opportunities with 5G and edge computing players,” Fodil said. “Actually, one of the outcomes we are looking for is at least three PoCs (proof of concept) from the 12-week program.”

The 5G Open Innovation Lab is lauded as a focal point for the 5G ecosystem. Comprised of developers, enterprises, startups, academia, and the public sector, the Lab is intended to assist startups in using 5G to develop new capabilities, use cases, and market categories. 

Essentially, the Lab wants to be a home base for startups to research, prototype, and test new tech that could fuel development and open new market categories. It will provide the resources needed to create and test innovations for 5G.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Lab will this year be virtual.

“The 5G OI Lab is an extraordinary opportunity for developers to work directly with technology and business leaders to design and bring to life their vision and dreams for new 5G applications,” Jim Brisimitzis, managing partner of the Lab, said in a statement. “This is not just any startup program. We are building a true partner ecosystem that will bring knowledge, resources, and capital together to change the world in profound ways.”

Quincy Preston contributed to this report. The story was updated on Sept. 24, 2020 at 12:03 a.m., to correct the attribution of quotes to Founder Samy Fodil.

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