Nexxiot
Nexxiot is a Swiss provider of asset intelligence based on the Internet of Things (IoT) for rail freight and intermodal logistics, headquartered in Zurich and founded in 2015. The company employed around 120 people as of June 2024, with operations in Switzerland, the United States, and the Nordic countries.
Knorr-Bremse acquired a strategic minority stake in Nexxiot in May 2022 and is the company’s largest shareholder, having invested around EUR 60 million at the time of the transaction.
The agreement gave the German supplier access to Nexxiot’s sensor technology and cloud ecosystem, part of a digital systems and software market Knorr-Bremse had targeted for growth. Dr Maximilian Eichhorn, previously Vice President Digital Products and Services at Knorr-Bremse, was appointed CEO in June 2024.
Products and services
The core hardware product is the Globehopper, a ruggedised IoT gateway designed for deployment on railcars, tank wagons, and intermodal shipping containers in hazardous field conditions. The railcar and tank container variant transmits location, motion, shock, temperature, and load status data at five-minute intervals to the Nexxiot Connect cloud platform; the intermodal container variant updates every 15 to 60 minutes.
Connect provides continuous fleet overview, alert processing, predictive analytics, and application programming interfaces (APIs) for integration with operator fleet management systems.
In April 2026, Nexxiot and Swift Navigation announced the integration of Swift’s Skylark precise positioning service into the latest Globehopper device. Standard global navigation satellite system (GNSS) reception typically has a margin of error of several metres; according to the two companies, Skylark corrects the signal to below one metre, giving track-level accuracy.
Under a joint telematics programme with Nexxiot announced in December 2023, Knorr-Bremse Node hardware collects data from the control units of rolling stock systems and passes it by Bluetooth to the Knorr-Bremse Hub, which uploads it to the Nexxiot cloud. Knorr-Bremse has identified its installed base of more than 130,000 CubeControl brake control systems and more than 100,000 Merak climate control units as candidates for retrofitting.
Certifications and standards
Globehopper devices for railcars and tank containers carry IECEx certification and the ATEX marking II 2 GD, with the protection types Ex ib IIC T4 Gb and Ex ib IIIC T135°C Db, permitting deployment in Zone 1 and Zone 21 environments, including tank wagons carrying gases, chemicals, and petroleum products. The intermodal container variant is certified for Zone 2.
Nexxiot took part in the pilot programme of RailPulse, the North American industry initiative for standardised freight wagon telematics interoperability. Under an agreement effective from January 2024, RailPulse acts as a non-exclusive reseller of Nexxiot hardware, software, and services to railcar owners in North America.
Reference projects
Customers include Innofreight (Austria), which in 2022 selected Nexxiot to digitalise its fleet of 2,700 InnoWaggons; VTG; Atir Rail (Paris, 4,500-wagon fleet); Tyczka Gase; and TTX Company. The customer names and the figure of around one million railcars and containers deployed globally as of June 2024 come from the company’s own material.
Recent activity
In February 2026, Pairpoint — a joint venture between Vodafone and Sumitomo Corporation — signed a commercial agreement with Nexxiot to integrate Pairpoint’s data provenance technology into Nexxiot’s rail device family.
The partnership extends an existing collaboration into rail freight and is intended to combine Nexxiot’s continuous position and status data with Pairpoint’s cryptographic data verification, so that rail operators can independently verify the provenance of sensor data across the supply chain.
In May 2026, Nexxiot and the North American software company Cedar AI announced the integration of Globehopper location, shock, and component status data into Cedar AI’s ARMS rail operating platform, where it is reconciled against waybills and movement events.
