Megan Brewster, VP of Advanced Technology at Impinj, helping wirelessly connect billions of everyday things using RAIN RFID technology.
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Global supply chains are rapidly evolving with increasing complexity, and the technologies and systems within them must advance just as quickly. At its core, the Internet of Things (IoT) was developed to connect the physical and digital worlds. Embedding digital technology into physical products turbocharges our world by providing actionable information.
IoT has long been leveraged by many industries, ranging from retail and healthcare to manufacturing and food and beverage, because it gives organizations greater insight into not just their products but also—and critically—the logistics of their production and distribution. When integrated into global supply chains, IoT can be business-differentiating, enabling seamless inventory management and item-level visibility of products as they move globally through every link in the chain.
As new challenges emerge for supply chain leaders—from perishable waste within the food and beverage sector to inventory tracking amid shrinkage and theft within the retail industry—businesses are demanding more advanced solutions to stay competitive. The next phase in the evolution of the IoT, called ambient IoT, could redefine how businesses interact with the physical world.
Throughout my career, I’ve worked at the forefront of innovation, spanning industry, government and academia. For the past six years, I’ve worked in the item connectivity space, investigating emerging technologies that will enable future products, driving roadmaps and growing emerging markets through innovation and standards. In this article, I give an overview of what powers ambient IoT and how it can interoperate with other advanced technologies to help transform global supply chains with item-level intelligence.
According to the Ambient IoT Alliance (AIoTA)—whose founding members include Qualcomm, Atmosic, Infineon Technologies AG, Intel, PepsiCo, VusionGroup and Wiliot—ambient IoT references "a class of IoT devices primarily powered by harvesting ambient energy from radio waves, light, motion [and] heat." These systems detect and capture contextual data, including temperature, humidity, expiration date and location. And given that they harvest energy from other sources and leverage small, battery-free, lower-power tags, ambient IoT systems are increasingly cost-effective.
When combined with other technologies like RAIN RFID and AI, ambient IoT can turn products like textiles and food into intelligent, data-sharing assets across supply chains, from retail environments to healthcare systems.
As discussed in my previous article, RAIN RFID is one advanced technology that can provide item-level visibility. As a RAIN RFID-tagged product passes a checkpoint, its tag is read by a handheld or fixed reader so that this physical event is captured in digital format.
AI is another. A 2025 survey of supply chain leaders by Impinj found that 68% of respondents are planning to invest in AI and automation technologies to help manage persistent supply chain issues. From demand forecasting to inefficiency detection, AI has transformational potential. However, an AI system is only as good as its input data. Supply chain leaders must ensure that the data they feed into these AI models is accurate and reliable.
Contextual data from AI and ambient IoT systems, combined with item-level data from RAIN RFID, could unlock previously unseen levels of product visibility, empowering businesses to move from reactive operational management to proactive, data-driven decision making.
Take the food sector, for example. The same Impinj survey found that an overwhelming 75% of supply chain leaders within the food industry say that reducing food waste is a significant challenge. Additionally, 70% of those surveyed still use manual spreadsheets within their operations.
Food brands are already piloting ambient IoT solutions, leveraging technological developments to tag and read previously “untaggable” items like proteins, liquids or metals. Adding ambient IoT capabilities—which can monitor temperature to ensure, for example, that protein products remain at the correct temperature across the supply chain—strengthen the available data about these products.
This advanced level of product traceability and visibility enables supply chain leaders to address an issue that has long threatened brand reputation and sales: costly and environmentally harmful spoilage of perishable goods. Perishable goods comprise not only food and beverage items but also cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.
Across ambient IoT, RAIN RFID and AI, it’s important to also recognize both the challenges and key takeaways that businesses face when deciding on and implementing new technologies. Ensuring return of investment—factoring in upfront costs and infrastructure requirements—as well as continued benefits of adopting new technology will always remain critical. One approach to controlling return on investment is ensuring that you're building on existing standards and fostering cross-collaboration.
Another challenge businesses face is overcoming technical debt, which can stem from infrastructure for a technology that ultimately failed or could be more traditional software technical debt, which limits the potential to layer in new technologies. A colleague once told me to “sweat the asset.” By this, he meant businesses should leverage existing assets that are already in their toolbox and learn the different ways to make them work best for your business.
When adopted and implemented strategically, ambient IoT can hold great promise for businesses. Ensuring this success critically relies on determining the foundational use cases that aim to meet your business objectives in advance. Because many of these objectives are likely cross-functional in nature—such as enabling circular business models, which can touch teams across IT, operations, sustainability and more—secure early buy-in at the C-suite level.
As the IoT evolves, data-driven intelligence remains core to its success. Ambient IoT opens a new layer of data which, when added to existing data layers, extends the potential to turn products into data-sharing assets, unlocking new levels of inventory insight within global supply chains.
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