LocusLabs, the leading indoor mapping & location platform in the travel industry, has announced a $3.5 million Series A round and has brought its indoor Street View-Like technology to over 70 airports worldwide. Investors in the round include SITA, the leading specialist in air transport communications and information technology, and Acorn Pacific Ventures of Silicon Valley.

LocusLabs' platform launched in late 2015 and is already fueling millions of airport passenger experiences in over a dozen of the world's largest airline and airport apps including American Airlines, United Airlines, Lufthansa, JetBlue and Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, and most recently launching with Delta's FlyDelta app. The platform for mobile, web, and on-premise integrates a rich location experience into existing applications boasting 90 million combined downloads and growing.

LocusLabs knows from experience that mapping at scale inside venues is especially challenging because of the lack of GPS, and the fact that things change more frequently in indoor environments. LocusLabs has employed unique technology and expertise to tackle the problem. CEO and Co-Founder, Campbell Kennedy, led the startup team that developed the original Google Street View technology, and he's brought a similar approach to LocusLabs for large indoor spaces. 'Traditional mapping platforms like Google Maps do not address needs of everything going on inside venues and buildings. Indoor spaces are more about 'things' than places. LocusLabs brings indoor location down to the 'things' level,' said Kennedy.

LocusLabs' technology stack is made up of a reality capture system consisting of depth cameras, lasers and other sensors which produces interior maps of buildings and builds out a database of thousands of places, products and things. This system enables LocusLabs to produce a highly-detailed 3D map of a large venue in a matter of days. The map is used to deploy indoor positioning technology to augment GPS, and camera-based tools running on a smartphone are then used to keep all the map content up-to-date.

LocusLabs started off by tackling airports, the largest and most heavily foot-trafficked indoor spaces on earth. With 2.3 billion passengers passing through the top 50 airports worldwide, the need and opportunity is huge for airports and airlines to contextualize the traveler experience, drive engagement and increase brand loyalty through mobile.

'Airports are mini-cities where millions of people eat, shop and work, so there is a need to help passengers find what they are looking for. LocusLabs helps millions of passengers each month. But with increasing investment and complexity of technology being deployed in large buildings, there is also a major need for B2B applications,' says Kennedy. For example, Miami International Airport is looking to location as a way to optimize their airport by monitoring where people spend their time inside the terminals so they can reduce air conditioning costs where it's not needed, which can save millions of dollars per year. Kennedy says this is possible because of micro-location technology.

With the Series A secured, LocusLabs will focus on...

-Product enhancements to improve the usability and performance, as well as technology scalability to take this same offering to thousands of venues

-Growth into new industry verticals and developing B2B applications focused on improving the enterprise

-Continued development in global markets and investment in growing the LocusLabs team worldwide

-LocusLabs aims to help people find anything they are looking for inside large complex spaces, by providing the most information-rich maps and indoor location experience in the world.

'The need and technology are finally here to bring mapping and location services indoors. Future IoT, smart building and augmented reality applications are absolutely dependent on detailed, up-to-date models. This is the new frontier for maps, and LocusLabs is the platform that will make it happen at scale,' explains Kennedy.

To learn more visit www.LocusLabs.com.

About LocusLabs:

Launched in 2015, LocusLabs is a San Francisco-based company that provides the platform and tools that enable apps to be location-aware on a micro level. LocusLabs is going a level deeper than existing mapping solutions by not only mapping places, but also people, products, and things, using technology that scales. LocusLabs' mission is to provide global venues, enterprises and brands a digital platform to communicate, share and manage everything about their physical space.