Belmont, Calif.-based ZaiNar emerged from nine years of stealth with a platform that turns an existing wireless network into a continuous sensing system for physical artificial intelligence. The company recently secured more than $100 million in funding and a valuation exceeding $1 billion.
The technology provides sub-meter-accurate, real-time location data for every connected device without satellites, cameras or extra drain on power or computing resources, the company said. Investors include Steve Jurvetson, a board member at ZaiNar and SpaceX; Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!; Tom Gruber, co-founder of Siri; Jaan Tallinn, co-founder of Skype; and Nicholas Pritzker of Tao Capital. Andreas Weigend, former chief scientist at Amazon AMZN 0.00%↑, serves as an adviser.
ZaiNar’s AI-driven platform represents a fundamental improvement over GPS by using radio signals already broadcast by 5G, Wi-Fi and private cellular networks worldwide, the company said. ZaiNar contends that traditional GPS relies on satellites and typically delivers only meter-level accuracy in ideal outdoor conditions.
GPS fails or degrades sharply indoors, underground, in dense urban areas or under signal jamming, the company said. ZaiNar claims it achieves sub-nanosecond time synchronization — a thousand times more precise than conventional network protocols — allowing it to calculate positions from the constant speed of radio waves (approximately 30 centimeters per nanosecond), the company said. The result is reliable sub-meter accuracy, including through walls and around corners, the company said.
This capability dramatically enhances navigation for physical AI systems such as autonomous robots, drones and coordinated fleets, the company said. Every device on the network gains continuous, centralized awareness of its exact location relative to surrounding objects and assets in real time, the company said. Unlike GPS, which cannot support low-power, always-on indoor operations, or vision-based systems that drift and demand heavy onboard processing, ZaiNar said its technology offloads location intelligence to the network infrastructure itself.
Said Jurvetson: “ZaiNar has solved a problem that’s stymied the industry for decades. Precise positioning without dedicated hardware infrastructure opens markets that were previously inaccessible.”
