Emlid celebrates its 10th anniversary

Continuous product and team evolution

Emlid's story began in 2014 when two students hit upon the idea that high-precision positioning should be easy to use and available to everyone. In 2015, Emlid's first Reach module sparked a crowdfunding success with $81,960 from 172 backers. With this funding, the team built the first batch and started selling.

Over the following years, Emlid released nine Reach models, with each new generation based on user feedback. Emlid's first field-ready Reach RS was released in 2017, kicking off the next phase of the company's growth. While the Reach module was primarily a product for DIY enthusiasts, the Reach RS receiver became an everyday tool for more demanding customers.

With the ambition of targeting the broader surveying market and challenging the industry leaders, Emlid introduced the Reach RS2, a full-featured multi-band RTK receiver, in 2019. The growing popularity of the Reach RS2 has expanded its use in diverse fields such as civil engineering, surveying, bathymetry, robotics, and agriculture.

The company spent the next few years optimizing production, establishing its headquarters in Budapest, Hungary, and growing the team to over 100 talented people in multiple locations. This has led to the next milestone. In 2022, Emlid introduced a brand-new product to the market—the Reach RX network rover. Pocket-sized and extremely easy to use, the Reach RX opened the doors for enterprise solutions in survey and GIS applications.

In 2023, the new flagship Reach RS3 was released. With survey-grade tilt compensation and UHF compatibility, Reach RS3 was designed to fully meet the needs of professional land surveyors. Even though the latest Reach receiver is light years ahead of the very first Reach model, the company keeps the gear as intuitive and affordable as possible.

To support the wide use of Reach, Emlid has intensified software development efforts to integrate its hardware and software into as many workflows as possible. Today, Reach receivers come with the Emlid Flow survey app for iOS and Android and the cloud-based Emlid Flow 360 for project management. The Emlid software suite also includes the free post-processing software Emlid Studio and Emlid Caster for streaming RTK corrections from a base to the rovers.

In 2024, Emlid has thousands of high-precision survey projects with Reach receivers being completed every day in more than 110 countries.