When it comes to generating substantial amounts of data, few activities surpass the observation of Earth from a distance. However, Ryan Abernathey and Joe Hamman noticed that merely having access to this data wasn’t sufficient for their climate tech startup, Earthmover, to flourish. This realization led them to a pivotal shift in their approach.
Rather than completely divesting from climate tech, the company is now shifting its focus to a more immediate aspect—daily weather and its impacts on life. The urgency surrounding weather data is what drove Abernathey and Hamman to reevaluate their business model.
“What makes for a compelling use case for our platform? It’s data that changes frequently,” explained Abernathey, co-founder and CEO of Earthmover, in an interview with TechCrunch. “That’s where we see a greater need for solutions. This leads us to focus on weather, wildfire occurrences, and new, rapidly generated observations.”
According to Abernathey, traditional climate outputs, while significant, often remain static, only evolving every few years. This highlighted the need for a pivot in Earthmover’s strategy.
The essence of Earthmover’s offerings lies in its robust data structure designed to manage extensive and complex datasets effectively. “In geospatial contexts, we refer to this type of structure as a raster. In the realm of AI, it’s termed a tensor. In classic Fortran, it’s simply an array,” Abernathey elaborated. Additionally, Earthmover has developed various tools to facilitate clients in extracting actionable insights from their data.
This strategic pivot has led to a burgeoning clientele for Earthmover, with over 10 paying customers to date, as shared by Abernathey. They recently secured a $7.2 million seed funding round, exclusively reported to TechCrunch. Lowercarbon Capital spearheaded this funding effort, with participation from Costanoa Ventures and Preston-Werner Ventures. The capital will primarily be allocated towards the development of new tools within their data storage framework.
Utilizing an open-source software foundation—comprising platforms such as Xarray, Pangeo, and Icechunk—Earthmover operates across major cloud service providers including Google Cloud, AWS, and Microsoft Azure, as well as on local servers. Both Abernathey and Hamman have extensive experience in the open-source community, having previously contributed to Pangeo and Xarray.
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The decision to adopt open-source technologies was influenced not just by their adeptness in handling Earth observation data—which can swiftly escalate to terabytes or even petabytes—but also by the preference of clients for reliable solutions. Abernathey remarked, “For large multinational corporations, the prospect of relying on a startup can be daunting. By opting for open-source tools, we alleviate some of that risk. Should we pivot or face other business challenges, our customers retain complete control of their data.”
Among Earthmover’s clientele are innovative companies like Kettle, an insurance startup that employs the platform to evaluate wildfire risks, and RWE, a notable German energy multinational. Abernathey mentioned that renewable energy companies, frequently affected by changing weather conditions, utilize Earthmover’s capabilities for better prediction of supply and demand.
The overarching aim of Earthmover is to democratize access to weather and geospatial data. “If you’re working at a trading desk, you’ll want a straightforward dashboard displaying the latest forecasts rather than having to run a Python script or similar,” emphasized Hamman.
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