Impinj Ships 100 Billionth RAIN RFID Tag Chip
Impinj CEO Chris Diorio marks milestone on Impinj’s journey to trillions of connected items, reflecting on the path to this point and what’s ahead.
Impinj recently shipped its 100 billionth tag chip, an amazing milestone on our journey to connect every thing. Even more amazingly, we shipped more than half of those chips in the past four years, a testament to our market and our opportunities. Looking back, our industry’s tag chip unit volumes grew at a remarkable 29% CAGR for the past 13 years. Looking forward, I can almost feel a trillion tag chips in our sights.
I often say that Impinj makes the most pervasive products that nobody’s ever heard of. Impinj’s RAIN RFID tag chips are all around us, from Uniqlo’s self-checkout kiosks to Delta Airlines’ baggage tracking to keeping fans moving at World Cup stadiums. We are the hallmark of a successful technology – so pervasive and so successful that the technology itself becomes invisible and all people see are the delightful results. And the fun part is we are just getting started. This milestone represents just a miniscule fraction of what I believe is possible.
Today, our partners attach our tag chips to retail apparel and general merchandise, airline luggage, marathon bibs, tires, medical devices and a host of other items. Others inventory the tagged items to improve enterprise efficiencies and reduce waste. But even here, we have barely scratched the surface. I envision a future where enterprises embed tags in every item they manufacture, transport and sell, and in which consumers directly engage the tagged items. A future where every physical item has a digital twin in the cloud, or in EU parlance a digital product passport, that stores and provides information about the item. That future, I truly believe, will positively transform our world.
I am personally beyond proud of the company a handful of us founded 24 years ago. To say the journey wasn’t easy is an understatement. Little Impinj led the RAIN RFID industry’s efforts in standards and spectrum as well as produced the industry’s leading products and sole platform. We completed an IPO at the 16-year mark, and today have a market cap of $3 billion. Yet the most exciting part of our journey is still ahead of us, with our total opportunity still less than 1% penetrated.
Through it all, there is but a single reason we succeeded – the Impinj team. Their perseverance, innovation, hard work and pure grit got us to this 100-billion-unit milestone and will undoubtedly take us far beyond it. To every member of the Impinj team, you have my utmost respect and heartfelt thanks. I am incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with you.
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Impinj is building a connected world
Impinj’s mission is to connect every thing. In 2023, the RAIN RFID industry delivered 850 million tag chips per week, and is poised to surpass one billion per week, perhaps this year. We at Impinj focus on those tag chips as well as on the reader chips and cloud services and enterprise solutions that drive value from connecting items via those tag chips.
An essential part of our mission includes protecting our products and solutions and the people they touch. Impinj Authenticity verifies items are genuine. Impinj Protected Mode guards consumer privacy. And we are working directly with our enterprise partners to make item reuse and recycling easier.
Learn more about RAIN RFID, and how together with our partners we are achieving our mission to connect every thing.
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Thursday, March 21, 2024
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Diorio
Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, & Co-Founder
Chris Diorio is the CEO, vice chair, and co-founder at Impinj and an affiliate professor at the University of Washington. He spearheaded the development of the RAIN RFID radio standard and cofounded the RAIN Alliance.
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