ARway Corporation (CSE:ARWY, OTC:ARWYF) is building infrastructure to help people find their way in the real-world Metaverse.
It might sound like an oxymoron, but it isn’t. The company has developed a no-code spatial computing platform, headlined by augmented reality (AR) enhanced indoor navigation and wayfinding solutions that deliver step-by-step directions to users.
Take, for example, a crowded convention hall. By scanning a QR code, visitors can access a venue map and receive precise directions to any number of points of interest and interact with AR content along the way.
It’s well ahead of anything else on the market, says CEO Evan Gappelberg, who spun off ARway from his other company, Nextech AR Solutions.
Traditional wayfinding uses what’s called blue-dot navigation (like the blue dot on your Google Maps app). Because GPS isn’t precise enough to work indoors, other systems use physical beacons, placed around an event hall or other venue, to send signals to users’ phones.
ARway’s souped-up wayfinding has drawn interest from hospital groups, trade shows, museums, malls, rent-a-car companies, retail stores and more.
“There’s a CapEx associated with the current technology,” Gappelberg said. “Our technology just kind of leapfrogs all that.”
It has potential well beyond wayfinding, too.
“Think of an operating system for the space around you,” Gappelberg said. “You’re sitting at your desk or you're walking around outside and inside your wayfinding experience there’s a computer interface that allows you to pretty much do anything.”
Today, AR is done on a phone, but ARway is also developing a hands-free system that can be worn like a pair of glasses with an operating system embedded within.
There’s no code required and no beacons, and users will be able to interact with AR experiences that businesses can drag and drop into place with no programming experience necessary.
If someone is walking through a museum gallery, they can receive directions via their glasses but also experience audio/visual cues that trigger when they walk by certain pieces. Or if they’re walking to their seat in an arena, they can interact with branded content from venue sponsors.
“You’re essentially monetizing the airspace,” Gappelberg said.
The full ARway platform offering consists of the ARway app for spatial mapping, the creator portal for content management and analytics and the software development kit for custom apps and integrations.
That, in a nutshell, is the real-world Metaverse. For a start, it’s a bit more practical than Meta’s own Metaverse, which saw Reality Labs lose $13.72 billion in 2022.
Meta and Zuckerberg and the whole VR Metaverse are out there in the future, but it’s not here today,” Gappelberg said. “You’re dealing with a disconnect where those guys at Meta I think believed a little too much in what was happening during Covid and thought it would continue forever.”
“When you look at ARway, it’s here today,” he added. “From our standpoint, we don’t have $100 billion in the bank, we have to be a lot more practical. Very few companies on Earth have that kind of luxury.
What ARway does have is a potentially transformative technology. By the time VR and the theoretical Metaverse catch up, Gappleberg plans to be miles ahead.
The business case
ARway was spun off from Nextech in October 2022. The wayfinding technology wasn’t getting any valuation inside Nextech, and Gapplberg saw an opportunity to unlock that value.
Nextech retains a majority stake in the company, which benefits shareholders of that company, and it allows ARway to raise money without diluting Nextech shares. Aside from Nextech itself, ARway insiders control another large stake.
That’s an indication that Gappelberg and his team believe in the technology long term.
“I see this as becoming standardized over the next one to two to three years where I think everybody's gonna just use indoor wayfinding, just like you use Waze and Google Maps,” Gappelberg said.
In its first quarterly report since the spinoff, ARway reported a cash balance of $1.5 million as of November 30. To hear Gappelberg tell it, the company is well on its way to a large slice of the $40 billion dollar indoor wayfinding pie.
Contact Andrew Kessel at andrew.kessel@proactiveinvestors.com
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