If you’ve ever crossed time zones and landed with a dead SIM, no signal, and a $47 roaming surprise waiting like a love letter from your telecom overlord, you’ve met the problem Airalo just raised $220 million to vaporize.
Founded in 2019 by Ahmet Bahadır Özdemir and Abraham Burak, two entrepreneurs with zero patience for legacy telecom red tape, Airalo has turned connectivity into something that actually works like it should: fast, borderless, and 100% digital. No airport kiosks. No plastic. Just data when and where you need it, across 200+ countries. Your phone catches a signal before your passport catches a stamp.
This Series C? It’s a heavyweight move. CVC Capital Partners’ Asia Fund VI led the round with a monster $185 million check. They weren’t alone; Peak XV and Antler Elevate came back for more. Not out of nostalgia. Because this thing is scaling like it stole something.
Let’s break it down: Airalo is now the first eSIM unicorn in the travel space. Over 20 million users. Doubled its base in under 12 months. Fully GSMA-compliant. ISO27001 certified. Oh, and their B2B2C platform, Airalo for Business, is becoming the travel-tech plug for remote-first teams and global SMEs trying to keep employees connected without the logistical backflips.
This isn’t a hype train. It’s infrastructure for the borderless workforce. While others were talking about “digital nomads,” Ahmet Bahadır Özdemir and Abraham Burak were building the plumbing to make global mobility frictionless, secure, and actually usable at scale. You don’t get to unicorn status in telecom without breaking a few monopolies along the way.
The plan? Beef up engineering and customer support by 50%. Roll out AI-powered plan recommendations, unlimited data packages, voice-only options. Scale the enterprise stack so CFOs stop sweating those monthly roaming bills. And lean deeper into APAC and EMEA corridors where travel meets commerce in motion.
They’re not disrupting telecom. That word’s overcooked. They’re rebuilding it, one digital SIM at a time, one clean connection at a time, one burned roaming contract at a time. And if you’re in travel, fintech, or remote work and still ignoring eSIMs? That static in your business isn’t accidental. It’s outdated.
This isn’t just a raise. It’s a reveal. The future of mobile connectivity doesn’t come in a tray. It comes from the cloud, backed by $286.9 million in fuel and a global user base that’s voting with their downloads.
Call it what you want. We’ll just call it Airalo. And this signal? It’s only getting stronger.
