Wiliot Product Overview – Wiliot

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The Wiliot Vision

What happens when we 'Connect Everything'?

Wiliot envisions a world of smarter "Things" that are self-aware and offer functionality not possible before — a world where the physical and digital worlds are securely connected using wireless RF technology. The Internet of Things can scale and start to offer real value as we understand where products are, who is using them, and when they need replenishing. Apparel and pharmaceutical packaging can become connected to the cloud. Manufacturing, supply chain, and inventory can be optimized. Makers of products and retailers can flourish in the face of disruption from online retailers.

This change that Wiliot is helping to accelerate is being described as a shift from supply chain to demand chain management. Demand chains are enabled by demand signals flowing in real time from products in stores and homes, reducing the capital tied up in inventory, driving lift in sales, enhancing the customer experience and reducing companies’ carbon footprint. The way products are made, distributed, sold, used and recycled, are being redefined thanks to a battery-free computer the size of a postage stamp.

Seamless Continuous Connectivity + Low Cost of Production

Wiliot was conceived with the idea of having the best of both worlds, RFID and Bluetooth Low Energy. We leverage Bluetooth connectivity from the pre-existing infrastructure - the Bluetooth radios built into our smartphones, smart speakers, access points, and even in many lighting infrastructures. But beyond the radios, Bluetooth has deep hooks into the operating systems we use every day - enabling apps to be woken up, even after they have been closed and the phone has been restarted. This connectivity is seamless and doesn't require the user to take action. The advantages of RFID lie in its physical attributes. Wiliot is achieving the same small form factor, embeddability, and low-cost qualities. By reducing what was once on a printed circuit board to a single chip Wiliot Tags can be manufactured with the same processes as RFID tags to enable these key characteristics. Wiliot technology includes sensing and ubiquitous connectivity. The data is protected, analyzed, and curated by the Wiliot Cloud, and made available through a RESTful API providing a Virtual Tag interface for applications.

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The chip consists of 5 main components: an energy harvester that captures ambient RF energy, an integrated sensing unit, a security unit, a processing unit, and a Bluetooth transmitter. It has three CPU cores, an ARM processor, it has ROM, RAM, SDRAM, inputs, and outputs - it's a computer.

Technology: CMOS 40 nm process
Size: 1.92 mm x 1.92 mm
Pinout: GPIO and Sensor Pin
MCU: ARM Cortex M0+
Memory: Flash /RAM (2 KB), ROM (64 KB)
Protocol support: Wiliot Ephemeral ID
Default Package: Inlay
Antenna: Printed/Etched
Security: AES-128 bit Encryption/Authentication
Events-based sensing and alerts:
- Cold chain (temperature monitoring, process compliance)
- Interactive Marketing (product pick up, consideration)
- Supply chain (presence, change of location, inventory)

Energy Harvesting

Wiliot Tags obtain energy by harvesting Radio Frequency (RF) from the environment, leveraging the abundant deployments of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. From the energy harvested, the Wiliot tag sends a standard Bluetooth advertising packet. It can communicate securely over Bluetooth to any device that supports BLE, phones, Wi-Fi access points, smart speakers, doorbells even LED lighting.

Range

Wiliot Tags can work across different ranges for a variety of applications. The first release of Wiliot technology addresses the personal area space (a few meters), both for energy harvesting and Bluetooth transmission. Wiliot has a roadmap towards an extended range version.

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Privacy + Access Control

Data sent by Wiliot Tags use the Wiliot Ephemeral ID format, encrypted with a 128-bit AES-based scheme that allows anonymity, confidentiality, and authentication. We have two layers of encryption to enable the safe transit of packets to infrastructure while maintaining the privacy of the application data. Security is enabled by a cloud-based resolver providing access to the data via a Virtual Tag API that can be easily integrated with web applications.

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Sensing

In addition to privacy, the cloud enables sensing through calibration, data processing, digital smart sensing, and product lifecycle management. The chip produces low-level data for temperature and movement sensing. The actual sensing is performed in the cloud. The chip has a detector on the digital I/O that can detect a change of state on a mechanical trigger. The raw data measured by the physical sensors is then combined with cloud-based machine learning algorithms, which translate these raw values onto the corresponding physical domains (e.g. pick-up/movement) through algorithms that are self-learning and improving over time. Wiliot tags can sense temperature, some kinds of movement, like whether someone is picking up a product that has a tag built into it. We can also detect packaging open/close events for tamper detection and consumption measurements.

Wiliot is a semiconductor and a cloud company. The chip and cloud are tightly integrated by design and for reasons of security and functionality cannot be used independently.

Product Development & Release

Wiliot plans to release one new chip per year. Wiliot is in a controlled release with V1.0, implementing pilots with a small number of large companies. This early engagement program is currently fully subscribed and is not accepting new applications.

We are also enabling Works with Wiliot Solution Providers to develop systems with our technology. We plan to allow anyone to register their interest in purchasing a developer kit of Wiliot tags shortly. Developer kits are scheduled to be shipped in Q2 2021. We are sharing regular progress updates in our newsletter, which can be subscribed to here.

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The focus on V2.0 is cost reduction and range increase. V3.0, planned for 2022, aims to reduce the price point further and increase usability and range further.

Wiliot does not sell tags directly. We own the design and sell the silicon chips that can be embedded in tag inlays. We do not manufacture or commercialize inlays or tags. We partner with world-class inlay assemblers and converters who sell them. To expedite time to market and streamline the production of tags, we provide tools, reference design, and code to those partners. The price target for finished tags is very aggressive and aims for a price in the single digits for large volumes (100's Mu) within a 5 year time horizon.

Wiliot's timeline is subject to risk and change.

Use Cases

With technology as disruptive as Wiliot, it can be challenging to explain the impact of this breakthrough. Yes, now we can "Connect Everything" but what does that mean to businesses, how will life change? As we progress our many deployments, it's becoming clear that one set of changes this technology is enabling is how companies manage supply chains. Deloitte refers to this as a shift from supply chain to "demand chain." Demand chain is a system where the visibility of items is continuous, and real-time demand signals are used to manage production and distribution more efficiently. Demand signals include tracking when shoppers pick up a product in a store, when purchased, and when consumed. Demand chain can save significant portions of a company's capital while driving a lift in sales and better topline growth.

To explain these concepts, we created the above short 2-minute video illustrated with the use cases we are currently working on:

Investors

Wiliot closed an A Series Investment round in January of 2017, in the first month of operation. Grove Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, and 83 North were joined by Qualcomm and Merck Ventures in October of 2017, raising a total of 19 million. After significant milestones, Wiliot announced a B Series Investment round with reinvestment from all members of the first round and addition of Avery Dennison, Amazon, and Samsung. This investment round closed at $30 million. In February of 2020, Vintage Investment Partners, Verizon Ventures, Maersk Growth, PepsiCo and NTT DOCOMO Ventures joined the other top tier investors backing Wiliot’s postage stamp sized computer. Wiliot has raised over $75m to date.

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A Series Press Release

B Series Press Release

Works with Wiliot

A partner program designed to enable best of breed solutions that tap into our sensing & security cloud + battery-free Bluetooth tags.

We decided to build a platform that could plug into the established ecosystems of smartphones, tag manufacturers, Bluetooth IoT devices, printers, and applications. We also see an important role for the Management Consultants and Systems Integrators that can help our customers glue components together and adapt their organizations to capitalize on the new opportunities, such as the move from supply chain to demand chain systems.

A platform that helps our partners build successful businesses on our product opens up more options and functionality for our customers. Our strategy is to enable an extensive ecosystem that will help accelerate the shift to Wiliot’s vision of “scaling the IoT by tagging everything that’s important”, changing the way things are made, distributed, sold, used and recycled.

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