Montreal-based Inlan, a pioneer in battery-less IoT tags and AI-ready data infrastructure, has raised $5m in series A funding.

This investment will enable Inlan to transition its hardware into large-scale deployment and to expand the software and data backbone required to support massive IoT adoption across industrial and supply chain markets.

“AI is poised to fundamentally transform supply chain management, but only if the underlying data are granular, real-time, multidimensional and reliable,” said Ali Shajii, CEO of Inlan. “That level of data simply doesn’t exist today at scale, because the sensing technologies needed to capture it are either too limited or too expensive. Inlan was built to change that. With this funding, we can bring truly scalable, AI-ready data to the supply chain world and unlock the next generation of intelligent operations.”

Shajii’s fellow co-founder and CPO Mohammad Hajikhani added: “We’ve spent the past two years developing a new class of battery-less tag that combines the affordability of RFID with the performance of active IoT devices. This funding marks an important milestone for Inlan and gives us the momentum we need to scale our technology into real-world supply chain environments. We’re excited to take the next steps towards making item-level intelligence accessible at truly massive scale.”

Inlan wants to create a world where every item in the supply chain can continuously report where it is, how it’s doing and what it needs, without the cost or complexity of today’s sensor technologies. By removing the trade-off between affordability and performance, Inlan makes it possible for businesses to access real-time, item-level intelligence at a scale that was previously out of reach. This means clearer visibility across operations, more reliable data for automation and the ability to respond to issues the moment they arise.

The investment was led by Saas Fee, with participation from California-based VC investor Shea Ventures, as well as contributions from Montreal-based TandemLaunch and several individual investors.

Inlan was incubated at TandemLaunch (www.tandemlaunch.com), a Montreal-based deep-tech start-up foundry and seed fund, whose managing partner Emilie Boutros added: “The support from a group of strategic and highly experienced international investors reflects our growing confidence in Inlan’s technology and its potential to transform large-scale data collection in industrial IoT and supply chain management. We welcome the opportunity to continue supporting Inlan’s journey.”

Inlan (www.inlantech.com) was advised by Pantek Securities and Fasken Martineau DuMoulin on the transaction.