2021, the year the Edge exploded

Exactly one year ago we announced Barbara IoT' s first round of investment. That investors such as GoHub, Bizkaia Seed Capital and SPRI had confidence in Barbara, at a time when almost one in five similar companies had gone bust in the last 12 months, was challenging to say the least.

Today it is time to take stock of this year, in which, with the support of our new partners, we can proudly say that it has been the best year in the company's history.

Let's start with the market. The pandemic is undoubtedly accelerating plans for digitisation and remote asset management, which is causing all forecasts for growth in internet-connected devices to skyrocket. IDC currently predicts that we could see more than 75 billion IoT devices by 2025. These devices are not only growing in number, but also in sophistication, combining a multitude of sensors and actuators with increasingly powerful electronics capable of processing millions of instructions per second.

The technologies of Edge AI (artificial intelligence at the edge), technologies make these devices autonomous and intelligent, but also reduce their traffic, response times and cybersecurity risks. For all these reasons, Edge-AI is set to explode in 2021. According to Gartner, it is estimated that 80% of enterprise IoT projects will incorporate AI-processed data, and 75% of that data will be processed at the edge by 2025.

Ahead of these trends and with a strong investment in product, this year we have been able to complete the development and launch of the third generation of our Cybersecure Industrial Edge Platform, of which we are particularly proud as:

a) It is aligned with the most demanding cybersecurity standards, such as IEC-62443.

b) It is compatible with more than 90% of market edge nodes

c) Enables remote monitoring and management of thousands of these nodes inSaaS mode, or on-premise.

d) It implements the most widely used industrial protocols in the Smart Grid, Water and Infrastructure Management sectors, among others.

e) It is based on Docker, the ad-hoc market standard, which enables our customers to create their own Edge-AI applications.

f) Outperforms market benchmarks in processor performance, number of data processed per second and response latencies

These technological advances have led major companies to entrust their roadmap to our technology, especially in the energy sector, where the Edge-AI is a necessary enabler for the management of an increasingly complex and digital electricity grid. Smart Grid, where the Edge-AI is a necessary enabler for the management of an increasingly complex and digital electricity grid:

• In May and June respectively, we made public our success stories within the Smart Grid sector with EDP y Cuerva Group. Both companies have relied on Barbara to begin their transition to a more digital, cyber-secure and optimised electricity grid with Edge-AI technologies.
• In July, we reported that our platform had been selected by the consortium PLATOON consortium, made up of companies such as Veolia, Engie and Tecnalia, to increase the energy efficiency of residential and corporate facilities, and to enable the exchange of cybersecure and sovereign data, using the Edge-AI
• In September and led from our Bilbao office, we managed to launch projects within the Hazitek programme to take our technology to Ormazabal's medium/low voltage electrical transformer stations, to the Port of Bilbao with Keynetic and RKL, or to the electronic products manufactured by Fagor Industrial, in collaboration with Ikerlan.
• More recently, and following our incorporation into the Iberdrola's Global Smart Grid Innovation Hub we received the great news that the consortium formed by Iberdrola, Indra, Barbara, and eight other companies, will receive a 12.5M€ boost from the Ministry of Industry to include Artificial Intelligence in the renewable generation sector, grids and customers.

With all this, 2021 has positioned us as the leading Spanish company in Edge-AI. These collaborations with clients from various industrial sectors have provided us with knowledge and success stories that we have presented at industry events and meetings:

• In June we started the series of webinars "Barbara Talks", which has been a resounding success with more than 800 attendees, where we have dealt with interesting topics such as "new energy business models" with our partners Nexus Integra and Fractal, and "trends in industrial asset maintenance" with our partners Nexus Integra and Fractal. "new energy business models We have discussed interesting topics such as "new energy business models" with Capital Energy, UFD from Naturgy and Grupo Cuerva among others, or "trends in industrial asset maintenance" with our partners Nexus Integra and Fractal, with success stories in the water sector and smart infrastructures.
• In October we presented our solutions Edge AI at BeDigital which is the reference forum for Smart Manufacturing technologies.
• We talk about cyber security, Edge-AI and data sovereignty at events of the stature of the Smart Grids Industry Forum, South Summit 2021 or the Valencia Digital Summit, among others.

For all this, and having increased our revenue by over 150% compared to the previous year, I can only thank the entire Barbara team for their hard work, and our customers and partners for the trust they have placed in us. Everything has paid off and has put us on the long-awaited path to growth, but it is only the beginning of many other great news that we will be announcing throughout 2022.

Until then, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

David Purón - Co-founder and CEO of Barbara IoT

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