Main Highlights:
- The total funding raised by AiDash has climbed to $33 million, which the business intends to use to hire additional staff and further develop its platform.
- AiDash seeks to establish itself as a market leader by providing a solution that enables “satellite-powered” operations in utility, energy, and related industries.
- AiDash’s website claims that their artificial intelligence algorithms are case-specific, pre-trained, and revolutionary.
- In March, Avista, an energy company serving Eastern Washington, Idaho, and Oregon, partnered with AiDash to develop a wildfire resiliency plan.
- AiDash competes with Ursa, which develops a platform for aggregating and integrating data from a satellite network.
AiDash, a startup that monitors infrastructure using satellite images and artificial intelligence, announced today that it had raised $27 million in funding led by G2 Venture Partners with participation from BGV, National Grid Partners, and other strategic investors as part of its Series B funding round. Because of the increased sales, AiDash’s total capital has increased to $33 million, which the company expects to hire more employees and further improve its platform.
Many industries utilize satellite imagery to boost production, reduce environmental impact, and even make investment decisions. The benefits of using satellite imaging are numerous. Because of an expansion of data at the start of 2019, an estimated 5,000 satellites orbited the Earth — and because of advancements in artificial intelligence that enable an analysis of the pictures more accessible than ever before, satellite imagery is becoming increasingly popular. Under Markets and Markets, the geospatial analytics market is expected to grow from $6.9 billion in 2020 to $27.9 billion in 2025 if current trends continue.
AiDash’s future plans:
As a market leader, AiDash intends to establish itself in the utility, energy, and related industries by providing a solution that enables “satellite-powered” operations. It was founded in 2019 in San Francisco by serial entrepreneurs Abhishek Vinod Singh, Nitin Das, and Rahul Saxena. It uses high-resolution multispectral imagery and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data to train artificial intelligence models that make predictions for maintenance, inspection, disaster, and disruption management.
SAR is a sort of radar that may be used to create two-dimensional photos of objects and three-dimensional reconstructions of the items they photograph. Compared to conventional, stationary radars, it works by exploiting the mobility of the radar antenna to produce a better resolution. This barrier is impervious to clouds, fog, and haze at all times of the day and night.
According to the AiDash website, the company’s artificial intelligence algorithms are case-specific, pre-trained, and innovative. Operational and management teams may extract relevant insights from past data and translate them into the most effective course of action using artificial intelligence algorithms. According to AiDash, the company offers a portfolio of satellite-based artificial intelligence technologies designed for essential industries like utilities, telecommunications, roads and railroads, intelligent cities, and mining.
Data from cellphones, vehicle-mounted devices, portable and preloaded sensors, and other sources is collected by AiDash to serve as ground truth for the system. Natural Resources Analytics provides analytics to customers such as National Grid and other Fortune 500 companies to mitigate the impact of wildfires, extreme weather events like hurricanes, and erosion on assets such as railways, highways, electricity transmission lines, and construction sites.
Avista, an energy business that serves Eastern Washington, Idaho, and Oregon, teamed with AiDash in March to design a wildfire resilience plan. According to David James, Avista’s plan manager, the platform enables the company to image its entire system, generate reports, and anticipate projects considering budget limits.
“This is a powerful platform that will help us differentiate between herbicide program, our encroachment program, and then our risk tree program,” he wrote in a recent statement.
Geospatial expansion:
Between 2019 and 2028, about 10,000 satellites are expected to be launched. The data analysis business is enormous, with Crunchbase estimating that geospatial firms have raised $4.1 billion in over 600 funding rounds.
AiDash competes with firms such as Ursa, which builds a platform for aggregating and fusing data from a network of satellites. Its competitors are Descartes Labs of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Cherre of New York, and Cape Analytics, which utilizes artificial intelligence and aerial images to do home insurance examinations.
Gartner believes in a report that geospatial analytics will become an integral part of many firms’ daily operations. “Increasingly, this means mastering the use of geospatial analytics and spatial thinking. For some organizations, this could be transformative — even becoming a launching pad for entirely new businesses.” the firm adds.
