Nova Labs Acquires FreedomFi to Drive Helium Network

Nova Labs, the founding team behind the Helium Network and pioneers of decentralized wireless infrastructure, has announced the acquisition of FreedomFi, a company which builds software for crowdsourced 5G networks.

With deep expertise in development of open source tools for deployment and management of next generation distributed mobile networks, the FreedomFi team will join forces with Nova Labs to make Helium the standard for decentralized networks everywhere. As part of the acquisition, all 30 FreedomFi team members will be joining Nova Labs, with FreedomFi co-founders, Boris Renski and Joey Padden, leading Nova Labs’ future expansion into the mobile space. FreedomFi has raised $9.5M from Qualcomm and Samsung in March of this year.

“The FreedomFi team has unique capabilities, a proven record of innovation, and are developers of best-in-class technology, so from a strategic standpoint this acquisition supports our mission,” said Amir Haleem, CEO and co-founder of Nova Labs. “The Helium mobile network will benefit greatly from the added expertise of FreedomFi and we look forward to working with Boris, Joey, and their team to make an even better consumer experience.”

FreedomFi is no stranger to the Helium ecosystem. In 2021, FreedomFi was the first to introduce and receive community approval for Helium 5G, paving the way to support the second major wireless network on Helium using the HNT incentive model. Since then the FreedomFi team have launched the world’s first Helium-compatible cellular base station, allowing consumers with zero knowledge of 5G technologies to set up a cellular network from their home and start mining cryptocurrency rewards from its operation. The company also has a “powered by FreedomFi program” that partners with a number of hardware and small cell vendors to enable them to build similar products for the Helium ecosystem.

“We’ve been working closely with the Helium ecosystem of hardware manufacturers, enabling them to build products to power consumer-deployable 5G networks for over a year,” said Boris Renski, FreedomFi co-founder and CEO. “Joining forces with Nova Labs opens the door for innovation that will have lasting impacts on the telecom industry, while staying true to our mission to make mobile networks accessible to all.”

“Using a crypto incentive model to crowd-source deployments of cellular networks has the promise of finally making community-driven mobile networks a reality, bringing affordable and ubiquitous connectivity to more people” said Joey Padden, CTO and co-founder, FreedomFi.

Nova Labs is the pioneer of decentralized wireless communications and founder of the core technologies powering the Helium Network, the world’s first decentralized wireless network.

Starting with LoRaWAN and 5G, Nova Labs is dedicated to building critical network infrastructure and technologies to support the development of open-sourced, affordable, and secure global wireless networks that are owned and operated by everyday people.