Steffen Siewert | Founder & CEO, Airfy

Why this work

The networks our children will inherit.

I am thirty-nine. Married for fifteen years. Two daughters who will grow up in a world that runs on networks I helped build.

Every router we ship, every line of firmware we commit, every customer we onboard answers the same question: will the infrastructure of the next decades be secure, sovereign, and made by people who care about who uses it?

That is the only thing I have worked on since I was eighteen. And it is the only thing I plan to work on for the rest of my career.

How I work

Three principles. Twenty years.

Build hardware where it is used.

Made-in-Europe routers since 2006. US production added in 2025. Sovereignty is local, not global. The factory follows the customer, not politics.

Stay close to the code.

Founder still ships firmware. 1,500+ supported devices, 50,000+ lines of C, Rust rewrite in production. The code is the company.

Earn trust over decades, not quarters.

First bank network 2018. Today 1,000+ financial institutions. Bundeswehr partner since 2010. Customers stay because the system stays.

The brands I built

One mission, five chapters.

Every brand below was a step toward the same goal: secure, manufacturer-owned WiFi infrastructure that lasts longer than the venture cycle that funds it.

Saxnet / MeshNode

2005 to 2011

First European WiFi factory. Mesh networking for industrial operators, mining, emergency networks, and the German armed forces.

Airberry

2012 to 2013

Lean reboot from a single laptop in Bavaria. Won the first Smart City contract networking traffic lights for real-time research.

Airfy

2014 to today

Cloud-managed WiFi platform. 10,000+ locations globally. Today the AI-native enterprise networking system shipped from Delaware.

AirZen Networks

2017 to today

Made-in-Europe enterprise platform. Sister company to Airfy, fully European-owned, built for sovereignty and finance compliance.

MeshNode

2024 to today

Tactical 4G/5G networking for armed forces. Hardware-first cybersecurity for field operations, no telemetry, no cloud dependency.

Career arc

Twenty years, four chapters.

2004 to 2011 · The hardware years

From workbench to factory.

Started at eighteen building WiFi accessory kits in Germany. By twenty, ran a 4,000 sqm router factory with 20 employees, self-financed with four million euros. Won the German armed forces as a customer in 2010 with a one-million-euro mesh deployment. Discovered the factory was too big without a sales engine. Shut it down at twenty-five. Kept the technology.

2012 to 2016 · The lean rebuild

Restart with a laptop.

Rebooted from scratch in Bavaria. Built Airberry, won a Smart City contract networking traffic lights, then moved to Berlin and launched Airfy as a cloud-managed WiFi platform for small businesses. Three thousand customers within two years. First daughter born 2015.

2017 to 2023 · The enterprise pivot

Built for institutions.

Moved to Switzerland. Partnered with a senior engineer and rebuilt the platform for enterprise from zero. Designed the first fully Made-in-Europe enterprise router. Closed the first 26-location German bank in 2018. Today, 1,000+ financial institutions and 10,000+ locations run on the platform.

2024 to today · The next chapter

US expansion.

Founded Airfy Inc. in Delaware. Production now in both Europe and the United States. Tactical networking for armed forces. AI-native networking platform shipping in 2026. Same mission, larger stage: secure, sovereign, manufacturer-owned WiFi infrastructure for the next twenty years.

Family

Long timelines need good people.

Married since 2010. My wife Mona runs her own work and is my closest counsel. Two daughters, both German citizens, growing up between Europe and California.

Family is the reason the timeline is long, not short. Anything I build has to still make sense to my daughters when they are my age.

monasiewert.com →

Building secure network technology for the next generation.