For a while, we’ve been hearing about how AI can create its own companies, or take over most of the roles in a given enterprise. You could call it an AI-driven company or an AI-native company, or you could theorize that humans will be completely out of the loop.
Now we’re getting some first implementations that show us how this works.
Let’s take an example related to space:
Perhaps the most famous private space company is SpaceX. SpaceX has a lot of employees, and although it uses AI, it wasn’t an AI-native company, because AI in its present incarnation didn’t exist when SpaceX was founded.
To contrast that, I have a recent interview I did with Steve Jurvetson and his crew at Future Ventures, where they are investing in new space companies, some of which are fairly AI-native. That resulting article also shows some of what firms are doing in this space. We are realizing the value of having satellites in orbit, and linking them to data that can power insights for tomorrow.
A Small Team
Speaking of tomorrow, here’s another example – at Tomorrow.io, 150 people are running a company with 10 departments, that’s focused on software, satellites and AI implementations in space.
VC and others are used to the space companies having hundreds of employees. Tomorrow.io is doing this with a fraction of the people, managing departments related to weather, space, government operations, and more.
Leaders talk about a strategic moat with proprietary satellite data, and suggest that the raft of use cases related to it gets propagated through a very detailed set of processes, with AI largely at the helm.
“We’re using AI across the business to be more efficient, more creative,” said Tomorrow.io Chief Marketing Officer Dan Slagen at a recent Imagination in Action event. “We spent the last couple of years building our own proprietary satellites and launching them up into space. We now have eight satellites live. We have two going every quarter, (and) proprietary data powers our AI, so that the outputs and the forecasts and the recommendations going to businesses are completely unique.”
He also elaborated on how the company evolved and pivoted toward its new model.
“We were a traditional SaaS company selling weather into the enterprise space,” he said. “And as we started to look at what our strategic moat would be, and where the data would come from, we figured it was space. … we went to the boards and said, ‘We’re going to need a couple 100 million bucks, and we’re going to build satellites and launch into space, and we’re a software company, by the way,’ and so the board’s immediate reaction is, what’s this going to look like? But through those conversations, we could prove (the data moat) and what we’re going to be able to have coming down from space that then powers our AI is going to be the thing that not only differentiates us, but also unlocks markets globally, whether that’s for enterprises or for the public sector, for international governments.”
Promoting Artificial Intelligence
Internal documents show that each of those ten departments has a number of specific AI goals that they need to accomplish each quarter, and that the people involved are focused on building in an AI-native way.
There’s also a big investment in training at Tomorrow.io, and the company expects to leverage that into the future.
“Tomorrow.io’s journey began in 2016 when our three co-founders recognized a critical gap,” spokespersons write. “Despite the growing impact of weather on businesses and communities worldwide, the weather industry remained vastly underserved. Nearly a decade later, this idea has blossomed into a global revolution, leveraging advanced AI, proprietary satellite technology, and actionable data to transform how the world builds resilience to weather-related threats.”
Versatile Weather Data
Here’s a concrete example of what the company is doing to, in its words, “unlock the power of next-gen weather data.”
Through new satellite systems, the company provides information based on radar, microwave data, and integrated products that is useful for government and public administration clients.
If you take a look at the webpage for this particular product, you’ll see an example of an air quality report in real time, with an air quality index rated “very unhealthy” and a primary pollutant identified as PM 2.5.
For those who don’t know, PM 2.5 consists of ultrafine particles from Industrial pollution, or even woodsmoke, that can get stuck in the lungs and cause respiratory problems.
Displaying that detailed information this way is an example of what Tomorrow.io offers its user base, in the form of, for example, weather for operations planning, custom visualizations, and tools for transportation companies.
Satellite Launch Operations
The company calls it “Legos in space.”
In an interview, Tomorrow.io engineer Jack Dallimore explains the processes involved in preparing a satellite for lunch – vendor coordination, assembly integration, testing, and more, and a process of “shaking and baking” the satellite for eventual use (see the video here.)
So part of those physical operations involve the satellite life cycle, where AI still plays a role.
Data Systems
The company also uses much of its real time information in PDF reports that will make information adjustable to stakeholders. That includes severe weather notifications and various types of broadcast messages, with tools like quick navigation and keyboard shortcuts, and data ported from the company’s R1 and R2 commercial weather radar satellites.
So all of this is being done with a skeleton crew, which points to the capabilities of artificial intelligence to maintain core positions in a modern business. It gives a new meaning to the phrase “the sky’s the limit,” and makes you think about how satellites will get launched in the years to come.
In a world where intellectual property is so important for data science, Tomorrow.io is inarguably collecting its own data from high above the Earth, and doing everything else using the power of AI.
So that’s one example of an AI-native company that’s built for the future. You’ll see a lot of this in various domains and verticals, not just in space, but right here on earth, next to you, and in your community, as AI gets increasingly incorporated into our lives.
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