Prodea Systems raises $100 million for its Residential Operating System

There are plenty of startups launching products aimed at connecting devices, but the Ansaris, a team of two brothers and one of their wives, have been working on the challenge of connecting different devices for the last eight years. The Ansaris built a telecoms startup that sold for $1.2 billion in 2000 and then later funded the Ansari XPrize for space exploration in 2004. They also built Prodea Systems, a company that now has seven service provider customers using its Residential Operating System to connect disparate devices and services in the home into a unified offering that ISPs or big consumer brands can manage and sell. I spoke at length with Prodea CTO Amir Ansari on the Internet of Things podcast this week, so click here to learn more. With a former astronaut as one of the founders, the software has the singular advantage of having been used on the International Space Station, allowing co-founder Anousheh Ansari to remotely control devices back on earth.