Helium crypto wireless network founder will rebrand the platform to Nova Labs after backing from Seven Seven Six, Andreessen Horowitz, Goodyear Ventures, and Deutsche Telekom among the main ones, as we are reading more in today’s latest cryptocurrency news.

Helium crypto company is the creator of the Helium decentralized wireless network and is now valued at $1.2 billion ad the recent $200 million round. The company will be named Nova Labs and will differentiate the team from the crypto-powered network. Helium provides a unique use-case for crypto tokens as the decentralized wireless network powered by the token incentives with the platform sign in size over the past year. The founders and contributors behind the network raised a lot of funding to help with the building of the network.

Today, Helium announced a $200 million Series D funding round and performed a pre-money valuation of $1 billion which brought the company’s valuation to $1.2 billion. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and Tiger global. The company announced it will be known as Nova Labs as a part of the efforts to help alleviate the confusion between the Helium decentralzied project and the blockchain behind it. The COO Frank Mong said:

“[Helium] is actually the people’s network. We really wanted to change our name to create a clear distinction that we don’t own the network. We are the creators and founders, but we open-sourced it, and it’s important to recognize that the people are the ones that are tirelessly growing and maintaining the network.”

Along with the name change, Nova Labs granted the Helium trademark to the Decentralized Wireless Alliance and will oversee things like the network improvement proposals. Helium was co-founded in 2013 by Amir Haleem and Shawn Fanning with an initial wireless network being built for the Internet of Things devices like trackers and sensors. The network grew rapidly from 14,000 active nodes at the start of 2021 to half a million by the end of the year. The network now has about 680,000 nodes that are up and running.

On the heels of the @Helium Network’s explosive growth, we’re excited to share two exciting developments: Helium Inc. has renamed to Nova Labs & has raised a $200M Series D to advance the Helium Network: https://t.co/hoxsqMPPoW. More on these updates 👇.

— Helium🎈 (@helium) March 30, 2022

Helium announced the launch of a 5G network designed for smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Mong explained that Nova Labs and Helium will continue looking ahead as further wireless standards emerge and will work on other distributed networks in kind. Mong added:

“We’re all extremely elated, but tired. We need help. Just thinking long-term, this is clearly a marathon and not a sprint. While we’ve had sprint-like traction, I really want the entire team and ecosystem to run like a marathon. This is, to me, a multi-decade effort.”