Zinier, a company that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automate field work, has raised $90 million in a Series C funding round, bringing its total amount raised to $120 million.

The startup plays heavily in the telecom sector — 80% of its existing customers are in the space, including network operators, equipment vendors and suppliers, contractors, and engineers, according to Zinier’s co-founder and CEO Arka Dhar.

That’s also reflected by the firms that returned to invest in this latest round, including Nokia-backed NGP Capital and Qualcomm Ventures. New investor Iconiq Capital led the round with participation from Tiger Global Management, Accel, Founders Fund, and Newfund Capital.

“Zinier is going to play a very, very important role there,” Dhar said in a phone interview. “Field operations is already very expensive. It’s almost 20% of opex for some of our telco customers.”

The company’s field service AI platform, ISAC, strives to automate tasks that cause delays. And there are plenty of those to overcome in the realm of 5G network deployments, including cell site locations, permitting, fiber, installations, and testing.

“It’s a lot of field work,” Dhar said, adding that automating those tasks will help operators and their partners overcome the hurdle of proving the value and importance of 5G. He envisions reaching a point where the entire work order from its origination is automated.

Zinier can also increase completion rates by 25% to 30%, according to Dhar. “So if one field engineer, with the help of a coordinator, is able to do 10 tasks today, Zinier can help them complete two or three more tasks per day” by improving scheduling and automating back-office operations, he said. “That 30% gain is massive when you compound it across your entire workforce.”

In 5G deployments, the back office plays an important role in effectively managing the project and coordinating between different contractors, Dhar explained. “All of those coordinations are going to be automated. All the time spent between phone calls and having to do that coordination is going to go away and the system will be able to talk to itself and make those decisions.”

As 5G gains momentum, the higher bandwidth and lower latency features will also unlock new opportunities in IoT and, by extension, embolden Zinier’s position, he added.  We’re actually going to see all those devices be able to stream data without hogging too much bandwidth, and that unlocks the true potential of Zinier — that idea of a device automatically telling us that ‘I need help and this is my problem and here is my diagnostic data’ without someone from the factory floor having to make that phone call.”

Zinier, which was founded in October 2015, said it will use the funding to expand into new markets, including Asia Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and Latin America. The company also plans to expand the capabilities and configurability of its AI-driven platform, and continue expanding into the energy and utility sectors.