Alphabet Spins off Its “Chorus” Supply Chain Visibility Project; Nothing New, but Potential Exists to Add Competition to the Item-Level Tracking Market

Chorus, formerly known as Project Delta, was developed inside X, The Moonshot Factory, Alphabet’s subsidiary that has the sole goal of developing radical technologies and solutions that aim to tackle the world’s hardest problems. Chorus is essentially a supply chain visibility solution provider, offering both the sensors and software to provide users with item-level visibility and “prescriptive insights into the health and state of their global supply chain and logistics operations.”

Originally, the project had a more humanitarian focus looking at food access, aiming to identify food surpluses and deficits in the supply chain and reallocate accordingly. Now, spun off as an independent company, Chorus is expanding its sights with applications across the food, transport & logistics, and healthcare industries.

While still operating in incubator mode, Chorus has already established partnerships with companies across 14 different countries, including Kroger, Kuehne & Nagel, and Lepape.

It’s no surprise that a lab designed to tackle the world’s largest problems decided to target supply chain visibility. While the industry has made immense strides in unlocking more visibility of their assets upstream, it generally remains patchy and not true “real time.” According to Tive’s “State of Visibility 2024” survey, only 24% of respondents have visibility into over 75% of their shipments, and 45% have visibility into less than 50% of their shipments. And when you consider the granularity of this visibility, most are only able to track full consignments, not the individual products.

By offering both the hardware and software needed to achieve visibility, Chorus is entering the industry in a strong position. The company offers sensors in three different form factors: the Seeker, which is a printable sticker to be applied at item level; the Explorer, which is the size of a key ring and has a longer life; and the Scout, which can operate as both a sensor and reader to track both the location and condition of goods. The Chorus platform then digests this operational data, providing a dashboard to visualize stock movements and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered analysis tools.

However, this type of solution is nothing new. At the item level, Wiliot and Reelables have been offering printable smart labels for some time now, with the ability to track both location and condition of goods. FedEx is also leveraging Bluetooth® Low Energy (LE) technology through its SenseAware ID package tracking, and UPS has rolled out a program to track every single parcel with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. And shipment-level tracking has become a very mature industry, with providers like Geotab, Powerfleet, and Motive all providing both the asset tracking devices and the fleet management solutions to go with it. There has also been a push from established RFID companies like Avery Dennison to compete on item-level visibility, with smaller, cheaper sensor form factors coming to market.

While Chorus may not be bringing anything revolutionary to the industry, this doesn’t mean that the offering can’t stand out and help propel the visibility industry forward. If more companies start applying sensors and readers to each stage of their supply chain, the entire industry stands to benefit, given the increasing number of assets that will be connected.

If Chorus is to make a name for itself, it will need to lean into its relatively broader hardware offering and its connections to Google Cloud. By providing sensors with different degrees of functionality, Chorus could beat the competition on price and flexibility, providing a cheap alternative to Wiliot and Reelable’s more extensive labels, while also providing larger form factor sensors where needed. This can be an attractive option for larger companies, particularly in perishables, that need variety in the way they track inbound assets.

On the software front, asset visibility providers could really start to compete with companies like project44 and FourKites simply through handling their own data retrieval. A big issue for larger supply chain visibility providers is the fact that they rely on external partners like Global Positioning System (GPS) providers for their visibility data, but many providers are pushing back and are increasingly charging for database access. In a perfect world, all supply chain data would flow seamlessly between stakeholders, but companies are becoming increasingly wary of sharing their data due to competitiveness and security concerns. If companies like Chorus can deliver asset sensors at scale for a low price, and provide software tools that enable actionable prescriptions to resolve issues, they may prove to be the partners of choice over the larger visibility providers that often don’t operate at a granular enough level for companies to see a Return on Investment (ROI).