Ambios Network

Ambios Network is a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) on Solana that incentivizes individuals to deploy environmental sensors and contribute air quality data in exchange for token rewards, building a continuously growing global dataset that enterprises and AI systems can access in real time.

Background

Ambios Network was formed in January 2024 as Ambient Network, co-founded by CEO Luca Franchi. Rather than building a sensor network from scratch, the team acquired PlanetWatch's established environmental monitoring infrastructure in March 2024. PlanetWatch had operated on Algorand and accumulated 25,000+ sensors across 20+ countries before ceasing operations. Ambient took over the community and hardware base, rebranded to Ambios, and migrated the entire network to Solana in Q4 2024, drawn by Solana's higher throughput and lower transaction costs. The transition included converting legacy PlanetWatch (PLANETS) tokens, resetting network statistics, and relaunching under new token economics. Former PlanetWatch users received a dedicated 10% of the AMBIOS supply through legacy and ecosystem airdrops.

How It Works

The network runs on an earn-for-data model. Participants purchase air quality monitoring devices and connect them to the Ambios infrastructure. Each device reports environmental readings every five minutes, contributing to a continuous stream of hyperlocal data. Sensor operators earn AMBIOS tokens based on the quality, uptime, and category of their device.

Four device categories define the rewards structure: Outdoor, Indoor, Wearable, and Commodity. Hardware options available through Ambios include the AirGradient Open Air (outdoor), Sensedge Mini (comprehensive indoor), IN5 (home and workspace), and a standard Ambios sensor at the entry-level price point. A network explorer and dashboard lets participants monitor sensor activity, daily rewards, city-level coverage, and aggregate statistics.

Beyond hardware, Ambios reduces the participation barrier through the AmbiGo mobile application, which lets community members submit environmental check-ins from their smartphones. These human-sourced reports supplement machine-collected readings, adding contextual coverage in areas without fixed sensors. As of mid-2025, the AmbiGo app had accumulated over 45,880 users and more than 2.7 million check-ins.

Network Scale

Ambios describes itself as the world's largest environmental monitoring DePIN by sensor deployment. The network spans 20+ countries, concentrated in Europe and North America, with over 8,000 active sensors and more than 12 billion cumulative data streams collected. The platform's air quality map uses a hexagonal grid layout to visualize coverage density and sensor readings by region.

Token Economics

The AMBIOS token is an SPL token on Solana with a maximum supply of one billion tokens (contract address: amb1bbMCnsnMgXfqj6JK359B8T23FijFgiLQiCrd9FM). The Token Generation Event took place in April 2025.

Token allocation:

• 40% — Mining rewards and network expansion programs (for sensor operators and community contributors)
• 20% — Core team
• 15% — Investors
• 10% — Ambios Network Foundation
• 10% — Legacy network and ecosystem airdrops (for former PlanetWatch users transitioning to Solana)

AMBIOS tokens serve four purposes: rewarding data contributors, enabling future access to premium datasets through token staking, supporting governance votes on network decisions, and sustaining economic health through repurchase and burn mechanisms. The staking mechanism is implemented through Streamflow Finance. The token is tradeable on Jupiter, Raydium, Phantom, Solflare, Backpack, and SwissBorg.

Data Applications and Enterprise Partnerships

The business model pairs community-driven data collection with enterprise data sales. Ambios's environmental data is positioned for use cases spanning air quality monitoring, smart city infrastructure, health risk analysis, insurance underwriting, marketing analytics, and AI model training.

In July 2025, Ambios integrated with SAP Datasphere, allowing businesses running SAP enterprise software to pull real-time and historical environmental data directly into their analytics workflows. The project has also established data relationships with dedicated environmental data marketplaces and AI platforms seeking verified real-world sensor inputs.

In 2025, Ambios received a $200,000 grant from the Google Cloud Web3 Startup at Scale Program and joined the CMC Labs Web3 Accelerator.

Team and Backing

The leadership team blends telecommunications experience with deep roots in the predecessor PlanetWatch network:

• Luca Franchi (CEO): Previously held senior roles at Telefonica, O2, and Sky
• Ivan D'Ettorre (COO): Former Chief Information and Technology Officer at PlanetWatch and a telecom entrepreneur
• Matt Hollobaugh (Business Lead): Former business development director at AccuWeather and sales lead at AT&T
• Roberto Falzone (Head of Technology): Former Technical Lead at PlanetWatch and blockchain developer since 2017

Advisors include Prof. Pratim Biswas, an aerosol science expert and Dean of the University of Miami's College of Engineering, and Alvaro Garcia, a partner at Borderless Capital with more than 35 DePIN investments.

Ambios raised a $2 million seed round in 2024, led by Borderless Capital, with Solana Ventures, Parami Investors, Sonic Boom Ventures, and Primal Capital participating. Solana Ventures' direct involvement places Ambios within Solana's DePIN priority cohort.

Solana Ecosystem Fit

Ambios operates in Solana's DePIN sector alongside projects like Helium, Hivemapper, and io.net. Unlike data-agnostic compute or connectivity DePINs, Ambios occupies the environmental sensing vertical — a segment with growing commercial demand from enterprise ESG reporting, climate risk analytics, and AI training pipelines. The migration from Algorand to Solana gave the network access to Solana's active DePIN ecosystem and liquidity, while the existing sensor base inherited from PlanetWatch gave Ambios a head start on density that new entrants typically spend years building.