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White-label third-party services – like virtual mobile plans – are becoming a $100M+ funding category as companies seek stickier user relationships.
ENTRY ANGLES
Build middleware platforms that integrate proven services via clean APIs · Pre-built component sets that enable fast integration of existing services · Aggregate multiple supply-side partners into a single integration layer
VERTICALS
CAPABILITIES
API design and integration expertise, Multi-partner aggregation and coordination, Cloud product integration knowledge
GIGS FOUNDER
“virtual investment broker.”
A "virtual" mobile carrier is a company that leases capacity from a physical carrier – the one with the towers and infrastructure – and resells mobile services under its own brand and pricing.
Why would a company want to do this? To deepen its relationship with users by adding a useful service on top of what it already provides. The range of use cases is wide: bundling data plans with connected devices, offering premium roaming benefits on high-tier bank cards, providing international connectivity when selling travel packages, building custom mobile plans for employees, sports club fans, or online community members, and more.
The catch, historically, has been the entry barrier. Setting up as a virtual carrier meant negotiating directly with a physical carrier, committing to minimum purchase volumes of minutes and data, and building custom software from scratch – user portals, billing systems, and all the rest.
Gigs built a platform that removes all of that. Any company can now stand up a branded mobile service quickly, assembling it from pre-built components.
Gigs sits in the middle: it's the layer between the physical carrier and the company that wants to become a virtual operator – except you don't have to negotiate anything. You just pick the services you need.
The platform is built around four pre-assembled components. A no-code plan builder lets companies configure tariff structures and customize the accompanying web pages – plan descriptions, selection flows, switching between plans – without writing a single line of code. A billing system handles payments, tracks usage, applies recurring charges, processes refunds, and manages sales tax. An AI-powered customer support agent independently answers prospect questions and resolves existing-customer issues – removing the need to train staff on a topic outside the company's core business. And an analytics dashboard gives team leads and executives a real-time view of technical performance and financial KPIs.
For deeper integration, companies can use the Gigs API to programmatically trigger any operation – purchasing a plan, upgrading data allowances, modifying a user's configuration.
Gigs first appeared on the radar [here](/review/pereprodavat-proshhe-chem-prodavat) in 2022, when it raised its initial $20 million equity round alongside a $4 million convertible note.
It has now raised $73 million in a new round – announced almost simultaneously with the launch of a joint program with Vodafone to help startups become mobile carriers for their own user bases.
On the same day Gigs announced its $73 million raise, Upvest announced a €100 million round, bringing its total to nearly $200 million. Upvest was [first covered here](/review/broker-vnutri) back in 2021, when it had raised just €17.7 million.
Upvest built the investment equivalent of Gigs: a platform through which any cloud service can offer its users the ability to buy stocks and funds and manage a portfolio – essentially becoming a "virtual investment broker."
Upvest itself isn't a licensed broker. It's the middleware layer between a licensed broker and the cloud service that wants to offer investment functionality to its users. The same pre-built components model applies: no-code account setup, full user-facing functionality, an API for deeper integration.
Conceptually and architecturally, Upvest and Gigs are the same play in different verticals.
Both Gigs and Upvest work with a single supply-side partner – one carrier, one licensed broker – because in each case a single partner covers the full spectrum of relevant services. Other verticals require aggregating multiple supply-side partners before the same middleware logic applies.
E-commerce is the obvious example: retailers sell different assortments, so you need to aggregate many of them before offering unified purchase access. That's what Rye ([reviewed here](/review/teper-mozhno-prodavat-vezde)) did – it raised $14 million to build a platform that lets any cloud service embed the ability to buy products from "millions of items" in its catalog via API.
Food ordering works the same way. MealMe ([covered here](/review/proshhe-kormitsja-na-chuzhoj-klientskoj-baze)) gives app developers an API to embed food and grocery ordering from a million restaurants and stores.
The key framing for both Rye and MealMe: these APIs aren't for restaurants or stores to expand their reach. They're for services in entirely unrelated categories to add ordering functionality for their own users.
A commercial real estate tenant app, for instance, can embed neighborhood restaurant delivery via MealMe's API. A community platform can use Rye's API to let members buy gifts for each other.
The same logic applies to Gigs and Upvest – mobile connectivity and investment services can be embedded by developers across entirely different categories. Users of any cloud service could, say, convert loyalty rewards into index fund shares or exchange them for data and minutes on the service's branded mobile plan.
Most founders default to inventing something new – building a novel service and hoping it finds demand.
The pattern across today's examples suggests a different approach: instead of inventing a new service, combine existing ones that already have proven demand. Build the middleware layer and the pre-built components that make those combinations fast and easy to assemble.
This isn't a new playbook. Plaid executed it famously years ago – connecting to hundreds of US banks and financial services on one side, while offering a clean API on the other that let any cloud service access those financial accounts on behalf of users.
But the playbook is heating up again, as the large rounds into Gigs and Upvest signal. The opportunity direction: building middleware platforms that integrate already-proven services into any cloud product.
The viable plays share a common structure: one or a few supply-side partners covering a broadly useful service, a clean pre-built component set that makes integration fast, and a value-add to the host product that's strong enough to justify the integration effort. Whether one supply-side partner is enough – as in mobile connectivity or investment brokerage – or whether the vertical requires aggregating many suppliers is usually the first thing worth validating.