Tile, the company once known for wanting to put a Bluetooth tracker on your keychain, hopes to integrate its technology into any device. Investors appear to be interested, if the $45 million raised last week is any indication.
"It was initially launched as something to help you find your keys. But since then, we've expanded to address that pain point for many other types of devices, like bags, and even beyond devices: pets, kids' jackets," Tile CEO C.J. Prober told Cheddar.
To date, the company has raised more than $104 million, according to Crunchbase, with the latest round of fundraising led by Francisco Partners, a private equity technology firm.
The San Mateo-based startup was founded in 2012. After laying off dozens of employees early last year, recent fundraising may offer a much-needed lifeline.
"The investment is going to help one of our big strategies, which is embedding Tile in third-party products," said Prober. "So anything that has a Bluetooth chip can be a Tile with a very simple software update."
Prober pointed to new product deals through which Tile is directly integrated into audio headset products, such as partnerships with Skullcandy and Bose. He added that more collaborations are in the works.
Despite the new direction, Prober — who was brought in as the company's newest CEO last September— said that Tile has not lost its focus on manufacturing its own devices: the light, square-shaped pods that users can attach to their valued items.
"We see an opportunity both to expand our own devices [and to] integrate into third-party products," he explained.
Tile saw its sales on Amazon Prime Day more than double compared to the previous year. Prober added that the company is also looking to expand internationally and noted that its business in Europe has jumped 160 percent since 2018.
"So far we haven't been impacted by tariffs, knock on wood. We do manufacture our products in China. So it's a situation that we're monitoring closely, but no impact to Tile to date," he said.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
