#tractive

Tractive Base Station teardown — 2025 silicon, 2013 arch

“Tractive's Base Station ships an nRF52840 — a Swiss-army-knife radio that supports BLE 5, LE Coded PHY for 4× range, Thread for mesh, Matter, and 802.15.4. They use it as a plain BLE advertising beacon. The hardware is 2025; the architecture is 2013. The vendor doesn't know how to use what they bought.”

Mars divests Whistle to Tractive — collar market state

“Empires don't sell off devices when the strategic value is rising. Mars's vertical-integration thesis just contracted — the empire that bought Whistle in 2016, AniCura in 2018, VCA in 2017 just let go of one of its data-feed legs. The empire is starting to look smaller from the inside than from the outside.”