George TziralisGeorge Tziralis

Privacy-first, physical world analytics with Ariadne Maps

Physical world analytics solutions have received a lot of attention during the last decade (remember beacons?). Tracking the volume and moves of people in retail stores, transportation stations, open buildings, and practically every real estate asset accessible by the public is essential for monitoring and optimizing their utilization.

Still, currently available solutions in the market leave much to be desired. Bluetooth beacon-based solutions require an app download by each visitor, and their adoption is declining. The same applies to wi-fi-based solutions that require connecting to a local network. At the same time, camera-based solutions remain costly and inaccurate, while increasingly raising privacy concerns by regulators and consumers alike.

Ariadne Maps advances the state-of-the-art by delivering top tracking accuracy, without an app download or wifi connection being required. Its affordable devices capture electromagnetic signals freely emitted by smartphones across various communications channels (such as GSM, LTE, wifi, or Bluetooth) and fuse them via proprietary AI algorithms, enabling GDPR-compliant tracking via a modern user interface.

In a world that is gradually reopening after the pandemic and has started taking its privacy seriously, Ariadne introduces a pioneering approach for physical world analytics, that is finally delivering according to market expectations, while also being privacy-first by design.

Real estate operators working with Ariadne get access to a wealth of capabilities straight out of the box, monitoring the ground truth in real-time like never before (up to 95% in headcount and less than one meter in trajectory accuracy!), also unlocking valuable insights to take their business to the next level.

The company was founded in 2019 by Georgios Pipelidis and Nikos Tsiamitros. Both born and raised in Veria, Greece, they first met at the lab during their postgraduate studies at the Technical University of Munich. Their research on indoor localization and positioning received various accolades, outcompeting solutions by leading technology companies. The two founded Ariadne Maps to bring such cutting-edge technology to the market.

As you are reading these lines, Ariadne Maps serves dozens of landmark locations and significant customers around the world, from the airports of Singapore, Glasgow and San Diego, to the train stations of Deutsche Bahn and Chicago, to shopping malls from Dubai to Berlin, to IKEA stores in three continents.

The company today announces the completion of a €2 million seed round led by Marathon, joined by EIT Digital, Singapore-based Sasya Terra and angel investor Raoul Oberman. The investment will help serve increasing demand by customers globally, as well as accelerate product development towards establishing the company as a leader in physical world analytics. 

If you are an operator of a real estate asset, you may want to give Ariadne Maps a try – the reviews the company is getting in the market are exceptional, for a reason. If you love working at the intersection of AI and real-world applications, reach out to the team, or keep an eye for future job openings – the company will be hiring for a number of roles in Germany, Greece and remote. Ariadne Maps is reimagining the analytics layer of the physical world, and we are excited to be a part of this journey!