what3words Raises £12M from Ingka Investments to Accelerate Its Global Addressing System
February 24, 2025
what3words, the London-based location technology company, has received a close to £12 million investment from Ingka Investments, the investment arm of Ingka Group, the world's largest IKEA franchisee operating in more than 30 countries. The investment will be used to develop new international partnerships, particularly in e-commerce and logistics, and to continue building out what3words's technical infrastructure as demand for its precise addressing system grows across automotive, delivery, and public safety applications.
what3words was co-founded in 2013 by Chris Sheldrick and Jack Waley-Cohen. Sheldrick conceived the core idea from personal frustration: as an event organiser in rural Hertfordshire, he routinely struggled to get bands and suppliers to the right entrance or location, and observed that traditional street addresses were fundamentally inadequate for specifying precise locations within large areas. Working with mathematician Mohan Ganesalingam, he developed an algorithm that assigns every 3 metre by 3 metre square on the surface of the earth a unique combination of three simple words. There are 57 trillion such squares, and the system operates in 50 languages. The address ///filled.count.soap, for example, pinpoints the exact entrance of what3words's London office.
The system addresses a structural problem with legacy addressing: street addresses identify a general location but not a precise point within it. A single address might span a 200-metre building frontage with multiple entrances, a large garden, or a car park. For deliveries, emergency response, or logistics where the specific 3-metre square matters, traditional addressing creates ambiguity that leads to failed deliveries, increased mileage, and, in the case of emergency services, potentially life-threatening delays. Over 75 emergency services in the UK use what3words to locate callers who cannot describe their position precisely; police, ambulance, and mountain rescue services have credited the technology with saving lives.
Beyond emergency services, what3words had by the time of the Ingka investment already developed relationships with automotive brands including Mercedes-Benz, Ford, and Lamborghini, which have integrated what3words addressing into their navigation and voice assistant systems. Delivery and logistics partners including DPD, Hermes, and Domino's Pizza have also deployed the technology to improve first-time delivery rates and reduce the carbon footprint of repeated delivery attempts. Ingka Investments made its investment specifically to support what3words's expansion into e-commerce delivery, where its ability to specify precise drop-off locations could meaningfully reduce the cost and carbon impact of home delivery at scale.
The Ingka investment followed earlier backing from investors including Intel Capital, Aramex, Deutsche Bahn, SAIC, Sony Innovation Fund, and Salesforce Ventures, and was part of a broader fundraising period that saw what3words raise over £80 million in total. The funds support the company's ambition to make its addressing system a global standard — a goal it has begun to realise through widespread adoption across multiple industries and geographies.
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