Blackshark.ai – an American AI Geospatial Intelligence company – has raked in $35 million in Series A funding. Known for creating a 3D Digital Twin of the world, Blackshark.ai has now developed an AI-powered tool for finding and tracking anything from the Earth’s orbit.
With this latest funding, blackshark.ai is looking to advance its mission of expanding its 3D high-frequency mapping and geospatial intelligence capabilities offering better value across a diverse range of sectors and addressing challenges on a global scale. The funding will be allocated to support strategic technology developments and bolster blackshark.ai’s sales and marketing activities.
Earlier investors Point72 Ventures, M12 Microsoft’s Venture Fund, and Space tech company Maxar are now joined by In-Q-Tel (IQT), Safran, ISAI Cap Venture, Capgemini’s VC Fund managed by ISAI, Einstein Industries Ventures, Interwoven Ventures (formerly ROBO Global Ventures), Ourcrowd, Gaingels and OpAmp Capital.
“The new partnerships strengthen our vision to democratize high-frequency 3D mapping applications across an extensive range of geospatial use cases, both public and private,” says Michael Putz, CEO of Blackshark.ai.
Commissioned for Microsoft’s Flight Simulator video game, their Digital Twin of Earth which was built like a central system for interpreting imagery that varied widely over time and origin.
Blackshark.ai’s expertise in the geospatial domain comes with an unlikely background of being a gaming company, which has helped them in providing different perspectives in interpreting orbital and aerial imagery. So much so, the company built Orca Huntr, the aforementioned platform to locate, label, and track any object from orbit.
The company shed all the complexity of geospatial datasets and their interpretation by developing a linear model which turned out to be simple to use.
In a TechCrunch article, author Devin Coldewey said, “Once you see the product in action it’s easy to see how it could make waves. The complexity of the product is hidden behind an almost ludicrously simple interface: You scribble on the part of the image you want to find more of, and the system finds more of that thing, pretty much instantly.”
At the core of blackshark.ai’s innovation is a platform that transforms massive volumes of raw data from satellite and aerial imagery into semantically labeled geospatial Digital Twins. This software not only facilitates rapid and accurate object detection and classification at scale without the need for extensive, costly, and time-consuming training data but also enables comprehensive analysis of land use and land cover.
From identifying jets to solar panels, and rivers to wildfires zones, Blackshark.ai’s Orca Huntr has the ability to accurately pinpoint objects with a scratch of the cursor. Usually, this type of identification and labeling requires expertise and time.
Scaling this task is another issue where a huge amount of money and outsourcing are required. From the perspective of defense and safety, another layer of complexity is added as outsourcing satellite imagery for interpretation goes out of the window.
“We’re not trying to fully automate it; we’re using an intelligent human in the loop, which other solutions don’t want. But the AI is never 100% accurate, so you refine it… but everyone else goes the traditional way of doing labeling,” Michael said to TechCrunch. “Orca makes it no code and simple, more accurate and secure — any user that can hold a mouse can detect anything.”
While talking about his aim, Michael emphasized that they want to become the foundational geospatial search engine for real-time, actionable geospatial insights on a global scale. The realization of this ambition seems to be well on track.
