Pathr secures new venture funding for the industry’s first spatial analytics platform

Pathr.ai, the industry’s first AI-powered Spatial Intelligence platform that uses anonymous location data to drive actionable business insights in real time, has secured financial backing from E14, an early stage, seed fund focused on start-ups emanating out of the MIT community. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.

Founded by CEO George Shaw, the Mountain View, California-based Pathr’s spatial AI platform and data analytics-driven “behavior engine”evaluates the way that people and objects move through, and interact within, their physical environment (such as a retail store, entertainment venue, or public space), with the aim of enhancing customer experience and increasing profits.

The proprietary “behavior engine,” which was founded earlier this year by Media Lab alumnus George Shaw, taps anonymous location data to drive real-time business and operational insights. The source-agnostic technology helps revenue-based (as well as non-commercial) organizations maximize profits and streamline efficiencies by more deeply evaluating how customer and constituent movement through the many physical spaces critical to operations (such as a retail store floor, warehouse, sports venue, bank, casino or municipal location) can impact success.

“The mission of the E14 Fund is to build and invest in the MIT Media Lab community—taking innovative, promising ventures to the next level,” said Calvin Chin, E14 Managing Partner. “Pathr is exactly the type of company that directly meshes with E14’s ethos of assisting visionary tech brands in achieving strong market deployment, and then effectively scaling to meet demand. Pathr CEO George Shaw first germinated the concept behind the company while at MIT. He has since understood how to commercialize it through a multi-disciplinary, multi-industry application that we believe will have true disruptive impact within the field of location-based data and spatial analysis.”

Pathr’s Machine Learning (ML) tools read existing location-based sensors to derive valuable customer behavior knowledge through analysis of predictive algorithms. The Pathr platform requires no new or retrofitted hardware and works across a host of vertical industries—mapping patron, employee, object and even robot movement. Data is retrieved and delivered in real time—allowing company managers to interact with customers and staff to impact in-venue activities as they occur (not after the fact, when spatial intelligence is less useful). Customer, employee and object movement is represented only as a graphic “dot” on a digital user interface, making Pathr’s behavior evaluation 100% privacy compliant.