Weve all experienced that moment of frustration when the GPS glitches and you miss an exit on the highway. The team at Tern AI, which is building a low-cost GPS alternative, says thats because the current technology is limited by its reliance on satellite positioning.Tern AI says it has figured out how to locate the position of a vehicle using only map information and a vehicles existing sensor data. The companys pitch: Its a cheap system that doesnt require any additional expensive sensors.At SXSW, the Austin-based startup demonstrated exclusively for TechCrunch that it could derive a position from nothing.No triangulation, no satellites, no WiFi, nothing. We just figure out where we are as we drive, Brett Harrison, co-founder and president, told TechCrunch while Cyrus Behroozi, senior software developer at Tern, loaded up the demo on his iPhone. Thats really game changing because as we move away from triangulation-based, which limits technology, now we have the ability to be fully of that grid.Harrison says this breakthrough is important for a number of reasons. From a commercial standpoint, companies that rely on GPS including ride-hail apps to delivery companies lose time, money, and gas every time their drivers have to double back because of faulty GPS positioning.More importantly, our most critical systems such as aviation to disaster response to precision farming rely on GPS. Foreign adversaries have already demonstrated that they can spoof GPS signals, which could have catastrophic impacts both on the economy and national security.The U.S. has signaled that it wants to prioritize alternatives to GPS. During his first term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to reduce reliance on a single source of PNT (positioning, navigation, and timing) services, like GPS. There are also several other initiatives which direct agencies and bodies like the Department of Defense and the National Security Council to ensure resilient PNT by testing and integrating non-GPS technologies.DeepSeek came out and said it costTern came out of stealth in February 2024 and announced its $4.4 million seed round a few months later. Thats a quick turnaround to achieve the type of positioning I experienced this week at SXSW.Testing Terns system in AustinTo start the demonstration, Behroozi connected his 2019 Honda Civic to his phone via Bluetooth, allowing the Tern application to pull in data from the vehicles existing sensors. He noted that Terns tech can be integrated directly into vehicle models years, beginning in 2009 and up.Usually, Tern sets the position manually to speed things up, but for our demo, the team wanted a cold start. Fehroozi turned off his phones location services, so the Tern intelligent system had only a cached map of a 500-square-mile boundary around Austin and vehicle sensors to work with.As the car drove, the system picked up road data to work towards convergence. It took roughly 10 minutes for the system to reach full convergence from a cold start, but Harrison assured me it usually takes around one to two minutes when it has a starting point. Plus, we were stuck in a bit of traffic, which slowed things down, Fehroozi added.Harrison noted that Terns system can also localize vehicles in parking garages, tunnels, and on mountains, which GPS struggles to do. Harrison wouldnt explain exactly how, saying the information is proprietary.We drove around for a few more minutes after the system reached full convergence, and I watched as it steadily tracked our precise movements in a way that appeared as good as, and in some cases better than, GPS. That became more apparent when we drove into downtown Austin, where my Google Maps regularly mislocated me throughout the week as I navigated urban streets dotted with towering buildings.Harrison said that Terns system is also safer from a privacy perspective because with GPS, if anyone knows your ID, they can find you at any time.Our system is a total closed loop, he said. Right now, were not emitting anything. Its independently deriving its own position [via on edge computing], so there are no external touchpoints.Built to scaleWe set up the company and the solution from the start to be scalable. If you look at that Waymo car and all of the hardware thats embedded, we dont see that going on a Nissan Sentra anytime soon. Its just too expensive. Harrison said, pointing ahead of us to a Waymo-Uber robotaxi.At the manufacturer level, if [Tern] is implemented within the infotainment system, its just a softwareTerns potential future customers could be anyone from automakers to mobile phone manufacturers, from Google to Uber. Harrison said the startup is open to growing the company, but also an acquisition.The primary thing is getting this out into the economys hands, with the growing threats and the emergence of tech thats not realizing its full potential because of the limits of triangulation, Harrison said.He noted that Tern is exploring possibilities with the government. The startup recently received a contract award from the U.S. Department of Transportation after a week of demonstrating its technology along with nine other companies from around the world.Were hoping we did a good job of showing the government whats possible now with American innovation, Harrison said.