Wiliot named winner in 2024 Progressive Grocer Impact awards for its Ambient IoT Food Safety Initiative

Wiliot, the Internet of Things pioneer whose Ambient Intelligence platform is enabling trillions of “things” to gain intelligence, today announced that its Ambient IoT Food Safety Initiative has been recognized as a winner in the 2024 Progressive Grocer Impact Awards in the Ethical Sourcing / Supply Chain Transparency category. Past category winners include food industry giants such as Kroger, Whole Foods, and Giant Food.

The Progressive Grocer Impact Awards recognize the accomplishments of food retailers, suppliers, and solutions providers that are addressing issues such as food waste, greenhouse gas emissions, and responsible sourcing across the food chain.

The award emphasizes Wiliot’s commitment to driving change in the food industry by leveraging a new technology paradigm – the ambient IoT – to reduce food waste and equip businesses with the real-time, item-level data they need to increase revenue, improve safety, achieve regulatory compliance, and reduce their carbon footprint.

“This first-of-its-kind initiative unites technology companies, standards organizations, and food brands around the shared vision that the ambient IoT is the most scalable, effective, and low-labor approach to achieving safer, more sustainable, and transparent food chains,” said Steve Statler, CMO at Wiliot. “No one company can drive the change we need to see across the food industry, which is why we created a coalition of like-minded leaders committed to adopting and scaling the ambient IoT in our food system. We’re honored to have our work – and the ambient IoT more broadly – recognized by Progressive Grocer’s Impact Awards.”

As part of its Ambient IoT Food Safety Initiative, Wiliot partnered with food industry leaders iFoodDS and Trustwell to incorporate its ambient IoT data into both companies’ food safety and compliance platforms. Now, in addition to tracking food products using traditional methods – QR codes, advance shipping notices, and electronic documentation – these platforms can also track products using Wiliot’s ambient IoT data.

The initiative is also designed to help the country’s largest food companies leverage ambient IoT to comply with the Food Safety & Modernization Act’s Rule 204, which aims to enhance visibility within the supply chain to achieve better responses to foodborne illnesses, contamination, and other public health and safety issues. The industry has until January 2026 to comply with Rule 204.

“This goal of better protecting consumers cannot be achieved without creating greater transparency and traceability throughout the entire food production and distribution system,” said Frank Yiannas, former Deputy Commissioner of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and one of the architects of FSMA Rule 204, who also serves as a Strategic Advisor to Williot. “The Ambient IoT Food Safety Initiative has established a consortium of industry leaders that’s helping food companies embrace a new technology that’s poised to make this transparency and traceability a reality faster and more efficiently than otherwise possible.”

Ambient IoT is a battery-free wireless technology that is being incorporated into a number of wireless standards, including Bluetooth, 5G Advanced, 6G, and Wi-Fi. It allows food products to be connected to the internet and the power of AI at a fraction of the cost of legacy technologies.

Wiliot’s battery-free ambient IoT Pixels can attach to any food product or packaging to embed it with ambient intelligence. Once connected to IoT Pixels, products push out item or case-level information about their location, temperature, carbon footprint, and more to the cloud-based Ambient Intelligence Platform – where food retailers and companies can access this real-time, item-level data.

Beyond its award-winning Ambient Food Safety Initiative, Wiliot remains committed to pioneering new technologies and solutions that create safer, more intelligent, and transparent food systems.

In August 2024, Wiliot released its WiliBot GenAI chatbot, which combines ambient intelligence with generative AI to enable any food product to talk in natural language. By simply scanning a food product affixed with an IoT Pixel, WiliBot allows food companies to ask questions about their products, in natural language, to gain real-time insights into manufacturing details, shipping conditions, carbon footprints, and more.

Wiliot has been recognized by many of the world’s most prestigious organizations with various awards – including TIME’s Best Invention Awards; Fast Company’s Next Big Thing in Tech Awards; MWC’s GLOMO Awards; Gartner’s Cool Vendor Awards; and now Progressive Grocer’s Impact Awards.