WindBorne wins a hefty US Air Force contract for its balloon data
techcrunch ·
WindBorne Systems has secured a significant contract with the U.S. Air Force to supply data from its fleet of autonomous weather balloons, potentially worth up to $49 million. The startup currently operates approximately 700 balloons globally, collecting atmospheric readings that feed into its proprietary AI forecasting model, WeatherMesh 6. This agreement represents WindBorne's largest contract to date, though payment is structured on an as-needed basis, with initial orders totaling $1.7 million already placed. Co-founder and CTO Andrey Sushko noted that the non-competitive award recognized WindBorne as the sole provider capable of meeting specific operational requirements for global data collection. The company leverages deep-learning technology to offer forecasts that it claims surpass traditional physics-based models like those from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. In addition to standard atmospheric data, WindBorne recently achieved a milestone by navigating an unpowered balloon into the eye of a typhoon using AI-driven wind predictions. This capability highlights the growing role of end-to-end learning in meteorology, moving beyond expensive supercomputers to faster, data-driven prediction methods.
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