As Internet of Things pioneer Wiliot approaches its 10th anniversary this November, the battery-free tracking company has plenty to celebrate. Fueled by the global proliferation of its postage-stamp-sized smart tags, the startup has grown into a billion-dollar company.
Founded in November 2016 by Tal Tamir, Alon Yehevkely and Yaron Elboim, the company’s flagship product is a high-tech packaging sticker that uses geotracking technology to locate shipments anywhere in the world.
The tags also monitor for temperature, humidity, light exposure and tamper detection, according to Wiliot VP Amir Khoshniyati.
With new corporate backing in April, the launch of Wiliot’s AI-powered Gen3 IoT Pixel in January and a partnership with Walmart in October 2025, the company has a long runway for growth.
Khoshniyati said Wiliot does more than just collect data – they make it trustworthy. By cleansing and interpreting the signals from its tags, Wiliot turns raw product and supply chain data into actionable information for its clients, he said.
Billion-dollar company in a decade
Over the last decade, the company has amassed a long list of well-known corporate backers, including Amazon, Samsung, Norwest Venture Partners, 83North Venture Capital, Grove Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, PepsiCo, NTT Docomo Ventures, Vintage Investment Partners and Softbank Vision Fund, according to M Ventures, one of Wiliot’s earliest investors.
Most recently, the company secured a $75 million minority investment from Avery Dennison Corp., a massive B2B manufacturer that engineers labels, industrial adhesives and inventory tracking tags.
Avery Dennison is also one of the globally leading manufacturers of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips and near field communication (NFC) tags embedded in products like product labels and credit cards.
“This strategic investment deepens the long-standing partnership dedicated to creating a more intelligent, transparent and connected world,” Avery Dennison said in April.
As part of the investment deal, Avery Dennison will become Wiliot’s preferred inlay design, manufacturing and commercial partner.
In the announcement, Avery Dennison highlighted Wiliot’s use of bluetooth low-energy (BLE) technology as a cost-effective alternative to traditional bluetooth trackers that require expensive batteries.
Wiliot calls these tags IoT Pixels, which harvest energy from ambient radio frequencies, such as Wi-Fi or bluetooth signals, to power themselves without a battery. The physical tags are roughly the size of a postage stamp and can attach to practically any surface.
“We believe in the power of passive Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) and the significant opportunity to expand our portfolio with the solutions from Wiliot,” said Francisco Melo, president of intelligent labels technologies and digital solutions for Avery Dennison. “BLE is a complementary technology to RFID.
“It increases the total addressable market and allows us to provide a broader set of solutions for improved visibility and condition monitoring for our customers, unlocking important data sets not possible before. With our strategic investment in Wiliot, we meet growing market demands to create value by connecting the physical and digital worlds.”
Next-generation IoT with AI
The investment followed the January release of Wiliot’s Gen3 IoT Pixels, which the company said gives the tech greater access to “connect everyday products in the cloud and extend real-time intelligence to the physical world at a global scale.”
“It’s been a transformational change,” said Khoshniyati.
Not only is it now able to capture humidity and light data, the Gen3 tech serves as the primary data source for the Wiliot Intelligence platform.
“By analyzing continuous streams of location, temperature, humidity, light, dwell-time and movement data, the platform provides real-time visibility and automated decisioning that enable a new generation of physical AI applications,” Wiliot said in January.
This enables clients to track and respond to issues in real time, while shipments are still in motion, the company said. Additionally, AI systems can interpret conditions and guide clients with automated actions.
“Physical AI is becoming a defining capability for modern supply chains,” said Wiliot President Julien Bellanger. “The combination of our Gen3 IoT Pixels and Intelligence Platform equips enterprises with continuous, ground-truth data at scale – transforming how they manage freshness, availability, logistics, and asset flows across their networks.”
Temperature tracking is key
Wiliot is focused on grocery products, particularly perishables, although the business also works across a wide range of non-food retail segments, such as apparel, pharmaceutical and healthcare, automotive and more.
The compliance requirements associated with perishable foods make Wiliot’s technology particularly valuable in the sector.
A shipment of strawberries can make its way through a wide variety of temperatures and weather conditions, Khoshniyati said. Wiliot’s Gen3 IoT Pixels enables clients to track the full environmental history of a product as it makes its way through the supply chain.
“Every time the temperature changes, you’re getting potential exposure to mold on your strawberries, and that’s a problem when you go to sell it, because now it’s gone through three or four volatility cycles on the temperature side, exposed to water and definitely there is a risk factor behind that,” he explained.
Wiliot lands a deal with Walmart
Wiliot landed one of its biggest deals to date through a new partnership with Walmart in October 2025.
Wiliot called it the first large-scale deployment of ambient IoT tech in the retail sector.
Integrating with Walmart’s own AI systems, Wiliot said the partnership will enhance the retail giant’s “supply chain efficiency, inventory accuracy and cold chain compliance.”
“With Walmart, we are advancing supply chain performance at an unprecedented scale,” Wiliot CEO Tal Tamir said. “This nationwide deployment adds a new layer of digitization to Walmart’s supply chain, empowering associates with real-time insights and automation that drive greater efficiency, accuracy and responsiveness.”
The partnership anticipates roughly 90 million IoT Pixels tags deployed on Walmart pallets by the end of 2026, covering 4,600 Walmart Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets and over 40 distribution centers.
“With Wiliot’s ambient IoT technology, coupled with our AI systems, we’re not only optimizing our supply chain to make faster, smarter inventory decisions, but we’re also tackling one of the hardest problems in retail – knowing exactly what we own and where it is at any given moment,” said Greg Cathey, Walmart senior vice president of transformation and innovation. “This enhanced visibility helps us deliver the consistent value, quality and experience our customers expect – and that’s what drives us every day.”
