09 September 2026

Season 8, Post 32: “AI, sophistication and personalisation”

what3words was founded on an elegant premise: to become the simplest way to talk about location. The company seeks to do this by giving every three-metre square in the world a unique combination of three words (this piece is being written from seated.poster.alive). Multiple use cases abound, from e-commerce and delivery to navigation and emergencies. The company already has 15m annual UK users. Your author met with the company’s co-founder recently for an update.

“What three words might best capture the next chapter of the company’s growth?”, seemed like a promising starting point for our discussion. The answer provided was “AI, sophistication and personalisation” (we generously agreed to count AI as one word). A year prior, AI was described as being potentially “transformative” at what3words. Fast forward and internally it has resulted in a marked acceleration in the speed at which the company’s developers and coders can deliver new output. Customers of what3words Pro services (launched last September) now have enhanced search and scanning functions because of the technology.

Among the use cases we discussed, one that resonated is how some environmental organisations are benefiting from deploying what3words to their employees. Field agents with the fully enabled Pro service can now capture photos of trees with specific (three-word) locations, import and integrate legacy documents with multiple different locations and share lists across the organisation. These are tangible and time-saving benefits. The potential when rolled out to a broader set of customers should be clear.

Even in a world where technology is evolving rapidly, your author was reminded that “humans have always needed to communicate locations to each other.” For a business such as what3words, it is important to recognise this, but equally to pivot to allow humans to communicate with machines, and vice-versa. In (one version of) the future, what3words could easily become the “toolkit” or “part of the infrastructure” – both sophisticated and personalised – that sits behind the user interface of every retailer or organisation powering new insights. It is all about location, after all.

9 September 2026

The above does not constitute investment advice and is the sole opinion of the author at the time of publication. The author of this piece has a personal direct investment in what3words. Past performance is no guide to future performance and the value of investments and income from them can fall as well as rise.

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