Powering the AI Era: Orbis Builds the Foundation for Intelligent Location Technology
Powering Artificial intelligence is transforming how organizations understand, analyze, and interact with the physical world. From autonomous vehicles and smart cities to logistics, retail, and enterprise analytics, AI-powered systems increasingly depend on one essential ingredient—accurate, reliable location data. As these systems become more sophisticated, the need for trusted geographic intelligence has never been greater.
At the Powering center of this evolution is TomTom Orbis, an open, collaborative, and continuously expanding mapping platform designed for the AI era. More than a digital map, Orbis serves as a living representation of the physical world, delivering validated location data that enables organizations to build smarter applications, automate decision-making, and reduce uncertainty across AI-driven workflows.
Built in collaboration with the Powering Overture Maps Foundation—an open mapping initiative supported by leading technology companies including Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon—Orbis combines multiple trusted data sources into a unified global mapping platform that is continuously updated and maintained. By pairing open collaboration with TomTom’s decades of mapping expertise, Orbis delivers a reliable “ground truth” layer that organizations can confidently use to power next-generation digital services.
As AI adoption accelerates, TomTom continues to expand Orbis with new technologies, APIs, interoperability tools, and cloud-native data formats that make location intelligence easier to access, integrate, and scale across industries.
Why AI Needs Trusted Location Intelligence
Location information has long been a fundamental component of digital experiences. Navigation systems, ride-hailing platforms, delivery services, fleet management, geographic information systems (GIS), and mobile applications all rely on mapping technology to operate effectively.
Today’s AI-driven applications, however, place much greater demands on geographic data.
Modern Powering machine learning models process enormous volumes of information from multiple sources simultaneously. They require datasets that are not only comprehensive but also consistent, structured, and continuously updated. AI systems also need reliable reference points that help validate outputs and minimize errors commonly known as hallucinations.
This is where Orbis plays a critical role.
Rather than Powering simply providing maps, Orbis establishes a trusted digital representation of the real world. Every road, intersection, building, point of interest, and geographic feature undergoes rigorous validation and continuous maintenance, ensuring that AI applications can rely on accurate information when generating insights or making automated decisions.
By grounding AI in verified geographic reality, organizations can improve model performance while reducing uncertainty across location-based applications.
Building an Open Mapping Ecosystem
One of Orbis’ defining characteristics is its commitment to openness and collaboration.
Developed alongside the Overture Maps Foundation, Orbis combines mapping information from multiple trusted contributors into a unified platform. This collaborative model helps accelerate innovation while avoiding fragmented geographic datasets that often create integration challenges for organizations.
Instead of managing disconnected mapping sources independently, businesses gain access to a continuously evolving global map that reflects real-world changes as they occur.
TomTom Powering further strengthens this foundation through extensive quality assurance processes. Every update is carefully validated to ensure consistency, completeness, and accuracy before becoming part of the platform.
The result is a scalable mapping ecosystem capable of supporting everything from enterprise analytics and urban planning to advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), robotics, logistics optimization, and autonomous mobility.
Expanding Access to Location Intelligence
Over the Powering past year, TomTom has significantly expanded both the scope of Orbis and the technologies surrounding it.
These Powering enhancements are designed to address three growing challenges organizations face when working with location intelligence:
- Managing increasingly large and complex geospatial datasets.
- Integrating location information from multiple independent sources.
- Transforming raw geographic data into practical applications.
Rather than solving these challenges individually, TomTom has developed a connected ecosystem where new data formats, interoperability services, and developer APIs work together seamlessly.
This integrated approach enables organizations to move location data efficiently across cloud platforms, analytics environments, enterprise systems, and AI pipelines while reducing development complexity.
Whether companies are building intelligent transportation systems, digital twins, location-aware AI assistants, or enterprise analytics platforms, Orbis provides a consistent foundation that supports scalable innovation.
Introducing Orbis OGP: AI-Ready Geospatial Data
One of the most significant additions to the platform is Orbis OGP, which introduces support for GeoParquet, a modern cloud-native format for storing and processing geospatial information.
Previously, Orbis already supported multiple industry-standard formats.
PBF enabled compatibility with open-source mapping tools and backend infrastructure, while FGDB supported GIS environments such as ArcGIS.
GeoParquet expands these capabilities considerably.
Designed specifically for cloud computing environments, GeoParquet enables organizations to store, query, and process massive geospatial datasets efficiently across distributed systems. It is optimized for analytics platforms, data lakes, and large-scale AI workflows where performance and interoperability are essential.
Perhaps even more importantly, GeoParquet makes Orbis data directly consumable by AI systems.
Organizations can now combine validated location intelligence with business data, IoT sensor information, satellite imagery, weather datasets, demographic information, and countless other sources within a unified analytics environment.
This Powering dramatically simplifies AI model development while improving the quality of location-aware insights.
Stable Global References Through GERS
A major obstacle in enterprise mapping is that different organizations often describe the same physical object using entirely different identifiers.
A road, building, bridge, or business location might exist across multiple datasets, each assigning its own unique ID.
Before these datasets can work together, organizations must perform an extensive reconciliation process known as data conflation, manually determining which records refer to the same real-world entity.
This Powering process consumes significant time, resources, and engineering effort.
To eliminate this challenge, Orbis aligns with the Overture data model by incorporating the Global Entity Reference System (GERS).
Each real-world object receives a stable, persistent identifier that remains consistent over time.
These universal identifiers create a common language across datasets, making it significantly easier for organizations to integrate external information while maintaining consistency.
Rather than repeatedly matching datasets during every project, businesses can work from a shared geographic reference framework that supports long-term scalability.
Simplifying Data Integration with TomTom GEM
Building upon GERS, TomTom introduces another important innovation—the Global Entity Matcher (GEM).
GEM automates one of the Powering most time-consuming aspects of geospatial data management.
Instead of manually comparing records across multiple databases, GEM automatically aligns an organization’s existing datasets with the shared GERS reference system.
Roads, buildings, addresses, and other mapped entities are intelligently matched to their corresponding real-world locations within Orbis.
Once alignment is complete, organizations can Powering continuously enrich their datasets using new information without repeating complex conflation processes.
This Powering creates significant operational advantages.
Engineering teams spend less time cleaning and reconciling data.
Data scientists gain access to richer, more consistent information.
AI models benefit from continuously updated geographic context.
Enterprise systems become easier to maintain as additional datasets can be integrated with minimal effort.
By automating interoperability, GEM transforms location intelligence from a labor-intensive process into a scalable enterprise capability.
From Data to Applications with Orbis APIs
High-quality data alone is not enough—it must also be easily accessible to developers.
To support modern software development, TomTom has introduced a comprehensive suite of Orbis APIs that provide direct access to core location services.
The Powering platform currently includes six primary APIs covering:
- Routing
- Interactive map display
- Real-time traffic information
- Geocoding
- Places search
- Reverse geocoding
Together, these APIs create a modular, API-first location platform built on open standards.
Developers can choose only the services required for their applications rather than embedding large, monolithic mapping solutions.
This Powering flexibility supports modern cloud-native architectures where independent services work together to create scalable applications.
Whether building web platforms, enterprise systems, mobile applications, logistics software, or AI-powered assistants, organizations can integrate precise location capabilities through standardized interfaces.
Empowering Developers Across Modern Platforms
TomTom continues investing heavily in developer tools that simplify implementation.
Its Maps SDK for JavaScript enables rapid integration of interactive mapping experiences into web applications while supporting a wide variety of development environments.
For organizations embracing generative AI, TomTom has also introduced the MCP Server, providing a unified integration layer that connects AI agents and large language models directly to the Orbis API portfolio.
This Powering enables AI systems to retrieve validated geographic information in real time rather than relying solely on static training data.
Instead of generating responses based on outdated or incomplete information, AI agents can reference current, trusted location intelligence directly from Orbis.
The result is greater factual accuracy, more reliable recommendations, and significantly reduced hallucinations in location-based interactions.
A Ground Truth for Intelligent Systems
As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded across industries, one principle remains constant: the quality of AI outputs depends directly on the quality of the underlying data.
This is especially true for applications interacting with the physical world.
Autonomous vehicles require precise road geometry, lane information, traffic rules, and speed limits.
Logistics providers depend on accurate routing and address intelligence.
Cities rely on reliable mapping for infrastructure planning.
Retailers analyze customer movement using trusted geographic context.
Emergency responders require precise location data when every second counts.
Across all these use cases, reliable ground truth is essential.
Orbis provides that foundation.
By continuously validating, updating, and enriching geographic information, TomTom delivers a living digital representation of the real world that supports both human decision-making and machine intelligence.
Shaping the Future of AI-Powered Location Technology
TomTom’s vision for Orbis extends far beyond digital maps.
It represents a next-generation location intelligence platform designed specifically for an era where AI systems increasingly interact with dynamic physical environments.
Through open collaboration, cloud-native technologies, standardized reference systems, intelligent interoperability tools, and developer-first APIs, Orbis enables organizations to unlock new possibilities across virtually every industry.
As businesses continue building AI-powered products and services, trusted location intelligence will become one of the defining building blocks of innovation.
By making geographic data easier to consume, integrate, validate, and scale, Orbis empowers developers, enterprises, and AI systems with the confidence to build solutions grounded in reality.
In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, accurate location data is no longer just an operational asset—it is foundational infrastructure. With Orbis, TomTom is helping create that foundation, delivering the trusted geographic intelligence that powers the next generation of intelligent technology.
Source link: https://www.tomtom.com