Giving Businesses a Bird.i View

by Startacus Admin

Google Maps is good for getting directions and checking how long it will take you to get to the cinema to see Star Wars, but it isn’t updated often enough to be useful for business.

When looking up your childhood home in Google Street View, you may notice that the images are from years ago; the satellite imagery isn’t much better. Usually, it is updated every 2 to 4 weeks, but images can be over a year old. Businesses who rely on up-to-date satellite imagery to track changes and make decisions, etc., need something better suited to them, specifically.

Something like Bird.i.

The Glasgow-based startup thinks that information in satellite and aerial imagery should be more accessible and affordable for everyone, and by tailoring their service to a business’s specific needs, they have created a powerful tool. Bird.i works with leading aerial and satellite imagery providers to maintain a frequently-updated serving of high-quality images.

Bird.i doesn’t just offer access to images, though. By applying machine learning and artificial intelligence, they can quickly and accurately extract specific data from the imagery, providing businesses with insights to help them make informed decisions, track changes and trends, solve problems, and find missing sailors on deserted islands (just an idea - don’t hold us to it). Infrastructure and construction, urban planning, facility management, commodity transportation… The uses and industries are (not really) boundless.

In November, Bird.i closed a $2.6 million investment round led by Accelerated Digital Ventures and including Concrete VC, Frontline Ventures, Satellite Application Catapult Services, and Scottish Investment Bank. This round brings their total investment to date up to $3.3 million for scaling their portfolio and expanding globally.

Note to self: insert hilarious ‘a little Bird.i told us’ pun when we think of one...

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• #big data
• #analytics
• #drone
• #glasgow
• #bird.i

Published on: 10th December 2017