Atmospheric sensing system company WindBorne Systems announced $15 million in Series A funding led by Khosla Ventures, which will take a board seat. And existing investors Footwork VC, Pear VC, and Convective Capital also joined the round.
This funding round comes three months after WindBorne unveiled its deep learning-based weather forecast model (named WeatherMesh) – which has unseated Google DeepMind’s GraphCast as the most accurate medium-range global forecast model in the world.
This funding announcement complements millions of dollars in revenue from government partnerships and contracts, including research and development efforts and data-as-a-service contracts for WindBorne’s atmospheric observations.
Since its founding in 2019, WindBorne has executed over 1,000 flight missions via its global network of autonomous and long-duration atmospheric sensing balloons. The company now runs the most comprehensive, cost-effective, and sustainable atmospheric sensing system on the planet.
Each balloon weighs only a few pounds, most of which is sand ballast. It is equipped with proprietary sensors and customized avionics that enable real-time communication and navigation.
WindBorne balloons gather 10 times more data per dollar over land, and 150 times more data per dollar over oceans, compared to the alternatives: traditional, single-use weather balloons called radiosondes, which only fly for a few hours and gather a single data slice over land, and dropsondes, small sensing devices manually released from aircraft over oceans. WindBorne’s balloons use a fraction of the materials of traditional balloons and can fly for 40+ days.
WindBorne’s balloons can change altitude to gather targeted data slices, enabling them to collect critical atmospheric data anywhere. Each balloon navigates via directed paths, readily traveling over oceans, deserts, and the Earth’s most remote places.
WindBorne operates the only platform that can fully and cost-effectively close this gap. Beyond data, there is also a key, new opportunity to improve forecast speed and accuracy through rapidly unfolding AI modeling technology. WindBorne innovates across the complete weather technology stack from proprietary data collection to AI-based modeling, making it uniquely poised to transform end-to-end weather intelligence.
WindBorne will use the new funding round to accelerate engineering across its technology stack. And the company will also expand its technical headcount as well as strategic revenue teams, such as proposals and business development as it branches into the commercial sector and international governments.
WindBorne also continues to expand its work with U.S. government partners such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the U.S. Air Force, and the Office of Naval Research through its data-as-a-service offering.
The company is now entering the commercial sector with its forecast offering – which was also backed by the U.S. Air Force. And WindBorne has already fielded significant interest from a vast range of industries impacted by weather like agriculture, logistics, aviation, utilities, energy grid operations, live events & travel, and insurance.
The company is developing its first commercial trials for its forecast offering this year. WindBorne’s team has uniquely fused ‘hard’ engineering with meteorological expertise. Many employees have roots in the Stanford Space Initiative, while its head of meteorology is a veteran of The Weather Company. WindBorne is also backed by Ubiquity Ventures, Susa Ventures, Jetstream Ventures, and Harvest Venture Partners, among others.
KEY QUOTES:
“Just as the privatization of space catalyzed huge leaps over the past few decades, we’re driving an equally exciting shift in weather technology. Collaboration across government, research, and private companies will play an essential role, marrying the best of commercial innovation with global systems that can deliver a tangible, positive impact for every individual.”
- John Dean, WindBorne co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
“The emergence of generative AI and WindBorne’s AI-native tech stack will enable us to deliver a new, smarter kind of weather experience that’s bespoke and co-creative in ways that software has never been before. The ability to cost-effectively deliver these insights across any industry and company presents an enormous opportunity to not only reduce emissions through smarter energy use, but also to help every community better adapt to the extreme weather that’s intensifying in the wake of climate change.”
- Kai Marshland, WindBorne co-founder and Chief Product Officer
“AI is fundamentally changing weather prediction, which hasn’t been meaningfully disrupted since the 1990s, but is essential to better understand and address the impacts of climate change. WindBorne’s novel balloon hardware coupled with autonomous flight software enables them to collect data no one else can, training a new generation of AI-based weather models.”
- Sven Strohband, partner at Khosla Ventures
