Key takeaways
- Battery-free Ambient IoT infrastructure can give enterprises continuous asset and inventory visibility without the labor and downtime tied to charging or replacing batteries.
- Wireless power turns low-power sensors into an always-on data layer that helps retailers, healthcare providers, logistics teams and manufacturers make faster operational decisions.
The best enterprise technology often goes unnoticed, simply working in the background and giving teams what they need without asking anything in return. Wireless power and Ambient IoT are moving in exactly that direction.
As enterprises look for ways to gather more data from their physical operations without piling on maintenance work, the appeal of infrastructure that runs quietly and continuously keeps growing. That shift matters most when you consider what always-on, battery-free connected devices make possible. When sensors and smart labels can stay powered and communicate on their own, businesses gain a steady stream of information about assets, inventory and equipment. The value comes from persistent visibility that doesn’t require anyone to charge a device or swap a battery.
Energous Chief Strategy & Growth Officer Giampaolo Marino explains how this infrastructure is taking shape and where it’s headed. Marino covers how battery-free wireless power infrastructure reduces the operational burden of managing connected devices at scale, the role of Ambient IoT in enabling continuous, real-time asset visibility across industries, and what a truly always-on enterprise will look like five to 10 years from now.
RFIDJouranl.com: Giampaolo, thanks for taking time to talk with us today. You’ve said the most valuable enterprise technology is the technology employees rarely have to think about. What led you to that view, and why does invisibility signal real value?
Giampaolo Marino: Glad to join you. For me, it comes down to how technology fits into the workday. If employees have to remember to scan something, charge a device, replace a battery or check whether a sensor is still online, the technology has created another task. Multiply that task across thousands of devices and dozens or hundreds of locations, and what looked like a small requirement at face-value quickly turns into a major operational headache.
The best infrastructure earns its keep by disappearing. Think about Wi-Fi: employees don’t come to work thinking about maintaining the network; they expect it to be there so they can do their jobs. That’s the direction wireless power and Ambient IoT are heading. When connected devices can stay powered and communicate on their own, employees can focus their time on the decisions the data enables rather than maintaining the technology producing it. That’s the real test of whether infrastructure is pulling its weight.
RFIDJouranl.com: When a device runs on its own without anyone charging it or swapping batteries, how does that change the way a business actually operates day to day?
Marino: It gives teams a far more consistent view of what’s happening across their operations throughout the day. With devices remaining active continuously, businesses get a steady flow of information from assets, inventory and equipment that feeds directly into everyday decision-making.
That changes the rhythm of daily operations; a retailer catches an inventory issue before it becomes a stockout. A manufacturer spots an equipment or process problem earlier. A logistics team pinpoints when an asset is sitting somewhere longer than expected. Teams respond as conditions change, make faster calls and keep operations moving with fewer interruptions. Over time, that consistent visibility builds a much more responsive way of running the business.
How Wireless Power and Ambient IoT Work Together to Power Battery-Free Devices
RFIDJouranl.com: Wireless power and Ambient IoT are terms many people still find abstract. In plain language, how do they work together to keep low-power devices running continuously?
Marino: A simple way to think about it is that wireless power provides energy through the environment, and Ambient IoT devices are designed to make use of that energy.
Energous PowerBridge transmitters, for example, deliver RF energy over the air, creating a wireless power layer that battery-free, ultra-low-power devices can access. At the endpoint, energy-harvesting and power-management technology captures that RF energy and converts it into usable power for sensing and communication. So a small BLE tag attached to a pallet, piece of equipment or retail item can remain active without somebody plugging it in or replacing a battery.
Put enough of those devices into a wireless power network, and you create an environment where physical assets can continuously provide information about location, movement or conditions. The power infrastructure is what allows that sensing layer to operate in the background.
RFIDJouranl.com: Battery maintenance is often treated as a minor cost. What hidden expenses and disruptions do companies overlook when their connected devices depend on manual upkeep?
Marino: Battery maintenance carries costs that are easy to underestimate. Someone has to know a battery is running low, locate the device, access it, replace or recharge it, confirm that it’s working again and manage that process across the life of the deployment. In a large warehouse or manufacturing facility, the sensor may be attached to a pallet, piece of equipment or asset that isn’t particularly easy to locate in the first place.
There’s also a data cost. Battery-powered devices are often configured to report less frequently to preserve battery life, which can leave minutes or hours between readings, depending on the application. In that window, conditions can change significantly – a temperature excursion, for example, could begin and persist well before the next reading comes through, leaving teams unaware of the issue until there’s already been an impact on product quality or operations.
Total cost of ownership has to account for labor, downtime and the operational consequences of incomplete data. At enterprise scale, those costs dwarf the price of the battery itself.
RFIDJouranl.com: Retailers are adding sensors and smart labels across their stores. How does always-on infrastructure reshape inventory tracking, shelf management and the customer experience?
Marino: Physical stores have long operated with a lot of gaps between inventory counts, transactions and manual checks. Take a common scenario: A system may say a shirt is in stock, but that doesn’t necessarily help an associate if it’s sitting in the wrong section of the store.
With battery-free BLE smart labels supported by wireless power infrastructure, individual products can become live data points. Retailers can gain a clearer picture of where merchandise is, how it’s moving and when availability is starting to change. That can help a team replenish a fast-moving size before it disappears from the shelf, find misplaced merchandise faster or identify an inventory discrepancy earlier.
For the customer, much of that should be invisible. They’re more likely to find the product they came for, and associates can spend more time helping them instead of combing a stockroom or manually checking inventory. And over time, that same stream of item-level data can also give retailers a clearer understanding of how products are behaving throughout the day, strengthening the information available for allocation, replenishment and planning.
Where Battery-Free Sensors Deliver Real-Time Visibility Across Industries
RFIDJouranl.com: In healthcare, uptime can carry real stakes. Where do you see self-sustaining connected devices making the biggest difference for patients and staff?
Marino: Healthcare is a good example of an environment where the value comes from making information easier to access without adding another manual responsibility for staff. There are many assets moving through hospitals and care environments, and knowing where equipment is and whether critical items are available can directly affect workflows.
Self-sustaining sensors could support persistent visibility into mobile medical equipment, supplies and other high-value assets without requiring staff to maintain batteries across a large sensor fleet. That can reduce time spent searching for equipment and give operations teams a more consistent picture of asset availability.
I also see potential around condition monitoring where appropriate, particularly for items that need to remain within specific environmental ranges. The important principle is reliability: connected infrastructure in healthcare has to directly support the people delivering care without becoming another system they have to constantly manage.
RFIDJouranl.com: Logistics runs on visibility across long, moving supply chains. How does continuous, battery-free tracking change what operators can see and act on?
Marino: A lot of supply-chain visibility still comes from checkpoints. You know when a pallet was scanned at one location and when it appeared at the next, but the journey between those events can remain unclear. Battery-free sensing can fill in more of that journey across warehouses, staging areas and other parts of the logistics network without creating battery replacement cycles for every tracked asset.
That richer data gives operators a clearer view of how assets are moving throughout the journey and where delays or unexpected changes are occurring. When something starts to deviate from plan, teams can see it sooner and intervene while there’s still time to act. That record also helps uncover recurring patterns, which gives operators the insight to address problems before they ripple further through the supply chain.
RFIDJouranl.com: Manufacturing floors are full of equipment that needs monitoring. What becomes possible when sensors never go dark and never need a technician to keep them powered?
Marino: You can start instrumenting parts of the factory that historically haven’t justified the cost or effort of continuous tracking. Even in highly automated production environments, visibility into the movement of everyday assets can remain surprisingly limited.
Battery-free sensors make it practical to extend digital visibility to those everyday assets. A manufacturer can see how work-in-progress moves through production, identify materials spending too long between stages, locate mobile equipment and build a complete view of how the floor is actually operating. Continuous sensing can also support condition monitoring by surfacing equipment or process issues earlier.
Once that data is consistently available, it becomes useful beyond tracking. Manufacturers can use it to better understand factory floor operations as a whole and identify opportunities to improve efficiency, throughput and automation.
Scaling Enterprise IoT: What the Always-On Enterprise Looks Like Next
RFIDJouranl.com: Some leaders worry that adding more connected devices means adding more work for their teams. How does self-sustaining infrastructure flip that assumption?
Marino: That concern is understandable because conventional IoT deployments often do create more endpoints to provision, inspect and maintain. The challenge becomes especially noticeable when a pilot involving a few hundred devices grows into a network involving tens of thousands.
Wireless power removes much of the ongoing power maintenance from that equation. Battery-free endpoints can remain active without routine charging or battery replacement, and the data can feed into systems and workflows teams already use. That makes it possible to increase the number of things you can see without increasing manual work at the same rate.
There’s a useful lesson here for deployment, too: start with one use case where a visibility gap is already costing time or money, prove the value, and expand deliberately. Energous has seen that model apply across inventory accuracy, cold-chain monitoring, and asset tracking among a plethora of other environments. It gives businesses a manageable way to introduce continuous sensing, demonstrate its impact in day-to-day operations, and then build from there as the need compounds.
RFIDJouranl.com: Looking five to 10 years ahead, what does a truly always-on enterprise look like, and what should leaders do now to prepare for it?
Marino: I think an always-on enterprise is one where the physical environment becomes a reliable source of data in the same way digital systems are today. Products, pallets, tools, equipment and other assets can continuously communicate their status and surroundings, with very little human involvement required to keep that information flowing.
That creates a much stronger foundation for analytics, AI and automation. Many enterprise platforms still rely on periodic or incomplete inputs, limiting their awareness of conditions on the ground. Persistent sensing fills in those gaps, and gives businesses richer, more timely information to inform decisions and drive automated processes.
For leaders today, that journey can start by building on what’s already in place. Existing identification infrastructure such as RFID and barcodes can continue to serve their established roles, with Ambient IoT adding a persistent sensing and real-time data layer where greater visibility can deliver measurable value. Starting with a focused use case gives organizations a way to prove the economics before expanding the infrastructure more broadly.
Five to 10 years from now, I expect this infrastructure to become an assumed part of the enterprise technology stack. Always-on enterprises will have a continuous understanding of their physical environments and the ability to put that intelligence to work as conditions change. The technology itself may become almost invisible, but its impact will shape decisions across the business every day.