Impinj wants every pair of jeans, box and pallet to answer when asked. Its tiny chips sit inside paper-thin RFID tags. A reader sends a radio signal, and each tag replies with its own identity, with no battery and no line of sight. Retailers use them to count stock in seconds. When the Seattle company went public in July 2016, it had spent years pushing a single radio standard, RAIN, across the industry.

Caltech Roots, Seattle Home

Chris Diorio co-founded Impinj in 2000 with Carver Mead, the Caltech chip designer who had been his doctoral adviser. Diorio became chief executive. Their early technology stored data on chips in a new way, and the company soon aimed it at radio identification. Impinj led the work on the RAIN radio standard, lobbied governments for spectrum and co-founded the RAIN Industry Alliance with Google, Intel and Smartrac.

Fourteen Dollars and Counting

Impinj priced its IPO at $14 a share on July 21, 2016, raising $67.2 million on Nasdaq. Clothing retailers adopted RFID tags to track stock, and other industries began to follow. Demand swung with retail spending and the chip cycle. More than ten years after its IPO, Impinj is still public on Nasdaq under the ticker PI and based in Seattle.

Cover: Five Butterflies and a Moth, from Diversae Insectorum...Figurae, Wenceslaus Hollar. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for insect specimens (every item tagged and catalogued).