Life360 Takes on Apple AirTags and the ‘Find My’ Network with $205 Million Tile Acquisition

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Apple AirTag’s main competitor has been acquired by platform Life360. Tile has been receiving backlash because of their testimony to Congress earlier this year, as well as how they are calling Apple’s AirTag competition unfair

Life360 announced this acquisition on November 22, 2021, and will be bringing new solutions that feed better location data to the Life360 platform and app. This deal is estimated to be worth $205 million and will go through in Q1 2022.

Tile will not become Life360 but instead be branded under the umbrella of Life360, similar to how Facebook and Instagram are branded under the umbrella of Meta.

Tile will continue to be overseen by current CEO CJ Prober who is also now on the Life360 board of directors with this deal.

Life360 is combining its leading real-time location technology with Tile’s hardware which hopes to keep families and individuals safe. Tile’s Finding Network, which is very similar to Apple’s Find My network, is expected to help Life360’s service reach 33 million users. 

Life360 just recently purchased another company, Jiobot, that used cellular-enabled and GPS locating devices to track children and the elderly.

Tile was once a strong advocate for Apple but that has recently changed with the company being the biggest critic of Apple in 2021. Tile products were once sold in Apple Retail Stores but were removed once rumors of the AirTag began. Tile testified to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing on Apple’s supposed anti-competitive actions and later complained to the European Commission. 

In 2019 both chief executives of Life360 and Tile signed a letter addressed to Tim Cook that addressed Apple’s policies on third-party location tracking software. At this time, iOS 13 was out and allowed third-party tracking software, but there were some restrictions. Developers opposed the policies as well. Apple hasn’t commented since these acquisitions have occurred.

It will be nice to see how this new company will work and who benefits more from the acquisition.

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