Israeli indoor positioning firm Oriient has announced an $11m series A funding round, bringing the total investment in the company to $16m.

The funding should help scale implementation of Oriient to tens of thousands of locations, open more verticals and drive global sales.

Oriient digitally transforms physical spaces with indoor positioning technology, which supports a wide array of business use cases. For retailers, it enables in-store navigation capturing revenue that would otherwise be lost due to unfound products, proximity marketing and foot traffic analytics. It also streamlines operations with route optimisation and the ability to track task execution. In smart buildings, wayfinding enables a seamless user experience for visitors, and provides facility managers the visibility to enhance security and operational efficiency.

Oriient recently announced two partnerships that cement its status. One is with grocery delivery giant Instacart to power in-store navigation used by shoppers at hundreds of stores in North America. The other is with Google, which has made Oriient indoor location services available on Google Cloud’s marketplace as an SDK for retailers’ mobile apps.

“When we set out to build Oriient, our vision was to create the world’s first truly software-only indoor location solution,” said Mickey Balter, the company’s CEO and co-founder. “We knew it had to be accurate, cost-effective and scalable, and that we couldn’t compromise on those things. Thanks to previous funding, we were able to deliver on this promise and commercialise the technology. After achieving technological breakthroughs in 2021, we’ve seen great momentum in terms of adoption. This new round of funds will help us ride that momentum to the next level: illuminating all commercial buildings in the world with the visibility and data-driven insights of the digital world.”

OurCrowd, a global venture capital equity platform with over $1bn of assets under management, participated in this round, as well as Regal Four, F2 Venture Capital, NGN Partners and Future Energy Ventures.

“We’re very excited about Oriient’s innovative technology, and their recent high-profile retail partnerships,” said John Medved, OurCrowd’s CEO. “We’re proud to support them in bringing indoor location services to more locations worldwide, helping visitors navigate indoors accurately on their own smartphones, and the businesses to improve their service, space utilisation, staff performance and operations.”

Founded in 2017, the Tel-Aviv-based 35-person company has perfected its proprietary algorithms that use Earth’s magnetic field, smartphone readings and AI to pinpoint any user inside a building, without the need to install hardware.

“Oriient has an impressive team of top-notch scientists working on unique and challenging deep tech problems; they’re truly cutting edge,” said Jonathan Saacks from F2 Venture Capital. “Legacy technologies won’t be able to compete because they require hardware, which is expensive and a pain to install and maintain, and they’re simply not as accurate as Oriient. Our bet is that in a few years you’ll see Oriient in almost every indoor commercial space. We’re thrilled to be with them on this journey.”

Oriient’s patented technology integrates directly with a business’ mobile app, harnessing existing sensors in every smartphone to deliver positioning to within one metre with no hardware installation required.