Smart Addressing Platform UNL Secures $2m in Early Stage Funding

UNL, a smart addressing platform for navigation and location-based services, announced that it had raised $2 million in early-stage funding backed by SGInnovate, one of Singapore’s first dedicated deep-tech investors.

The company said the fresh funding would allow it to develop the Internet of Places core infrastructure as well as further expand operations into key markets globally, starting with Asia.

Mapping and location platform solutions HERE Technologies and Singapore-based early-stage deep-tech venture capital fund Elev8.vc co-anchored the funding round that will finance UNL’s effort to build the Internet of Places.

The Internet of Places is a trusted network where real-life locations are coupled with their smart UNL digital doppelgangers to power next-generation hyper-local experiences, applications, and micro-services on top of the UNL infrastructure.

Other investors that joined the round include the US-headquartered venture capital fund SOSV and its program Mobile Only Accelerator (MOX). Amsterdam-based Venturerock – a digital venture capital platform and ecosystem of founders, backers, and venture builders, also participated.

Founded in 2018 and based in The Netherlands, UNL is a smart addressing platform that provides any location with a unique, universal location ID.

Adding a programmable layer to real-life locations, UNL is building the Internet of Places, serving as an infrastructure for the location-based service economy. Making any location a point of sale, delivery, and payment.

In its core, UNL is an infrastructural technology that divides the world into a 3D grid of micro-cells. To every cell, UNL assigns a unique, global location ID similar to domain names, and adds a smart layer to make locations anywhere programmable and transactional.

“We are responding to the setbacks of traditional addressing systems, and moving towards a new-age solution for location-based services and building the decentralized Internet of Places for addressing, geospace, navigation, communication, and load-balancing,” the company said on its website.

“UNL is a whole new way to think about locations. It’s about economic impact and unlocking places to become the gravity points for location-based services, “said Xander van der Heijden, CEO and founder of UNL. “And it’s about economic inclusion: bringing 4 billion unaddressed people into the global digital economy.”