Losing stuff sucks. It’s much more frustrating when something isn’t really lost, but reasonably left behind in a location, like an airport or sports stadium, which makes it hard to get back. My friend Caitlin knows this all too well; she’s yet to be reunited with the phone she lost at Oktoberfest on September 27, despite confirming in November that they’ve it.

While Oktoberfest is a more extreme example, people leave a variety of things behind in hotels, on transportation and at events. For instance, the MTA transit system in Latest York collected greater than 18,000 lost items from 2018 to 2023 — and that point includes when people were sheltering in place for the pandemic. Boomerang thinks AI can fix lost and located.

The Miami-based startup built software that uses machine learning to match pictures and descriptions of lost items. Customers, which may range from gyms to theme parks, upload pictures and descriptions of their lost and located while consumers do the identical for the item they’ve lost. If there’s a match, consumers can select to choose up their items or have them shipped.

This model hopes to get consumers their items back faster while replacing the present system of individuals calling customer support desk phone lines repeatedly for updates on their items, in keeping with Boomerang co-founder and CEO Skyler Logsdon.