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Item-level tracking, finally cheap enough to put on everything.
Today we're announcing a partnership with InPlay Inc. to pair their IN100 NanoBeacon chip with Hubble's network of 95 million-plus gateways. The combination delivers continuous, global asset tracking at roughly the cost of a passive RFID tag, with no readers, scanners, or warehouse infrastructure to install.
The Tradeoff Supply Chains Have Been Stuck With
For years, tracking physical goods has meant choosing between cost and coverage. Passive RFID is cheap, but it only works when something's within a few feet of a reader. Cellular trackers reach further, but they're expensive, power-hungry, and LTE only covers about 15% of the Earth's landmass.
The result: just 2% of companies can see past their second-tier suppliers. Those blind spots cost the average business around $13 million a year.
How the IN100 + Hubble Stack Works
InPlay's IN100 NanoBeacon is a plug-and-play Bluetooth chip small enough to drop into smart labels, wearables, and tiny IoT trackers. Once it ships with Hubble firmware, the device starts talking to our network on day one. No custom hardware. No infrastructure spin-up. No gateways to deploy on your end.
Pair that with sub-$1 unit cost and item-level visibility starts making sense for goods that have never justified a tracker before.
Why We Built This Together
"RFID makes you build infrastructure around every tag. Hubble is like an API layer for monitoring the physical world without needing your own physical scanning infrastructure," said Alex Haro, CEO and co-founder of Hubble Network. "Combined with InPlay's chips, which are small, ultra low-power, and built to scale, we're making global tracking possible at a price that puts item-level visibility within reach for any business."
"For years, supply chains chose between cheap tags with limited range or costly trackers with broader reach," said Jason Wu, Cofounder and CEO of InPlay Inc. "Our partnership with Hubble Network is a massive leap forward for our ecosystem. Our customers now have an out-of-the-box solution to take the data generated by our chips and broadcast it anywhere in the world. Together, we are turning simple packages into highly intelligent and connected nodes for improved tracking and condition monitoring."
Where We're Pointing This First
We're running joint go-to-market efforts with InPlay across:
Smart labels for individual SKUs and parcels
Cold chain monitoring, with continuous temperature telemetry
Returnable transport items (totes, pallets, dollies) that have a habit of vanishing
Wearables for safety, asset, and personnel tracking
Wildlife monitoring for conservation, herd management, and habitat research
Building on Recent Momentum
The InPlay deal lands alongside our recent integration with Samsara for connected asset tracking and our collaboration with Texas Instruments, which puts Hubble firmware on TI Bluetooth chips out of the box. On the InPlay side, NanoBeacon already ships in products from Identiv, NXP, and Bosch.
The picture we're after: any object, anywhere, reporting in at a cost that finally pencils out.
Ready to Start Building?
The IN100 on Hubble's global network is ready for design teams now. Get in touch or start free in the developer dashboard.
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