Atlanta-based startup Danti is coming out of stealth mode with a plan to transform how we search images across the globe.
Using public records, social media, and a wide range of drone and satellite imagery sources, Danti looks to be a “search engine for Earth data.” While that type of data is typically siloed and hard to access, Danti makes it possible for a user to ask a simple question and get back relative geospatial information.
“Every day, there are terabytes of data produced on physical places by satellites, drones, manned aircraft, analytics firms, social media, news, and other sources. The disorganization of this data is a compounding problem,” said CTO and co-founder Martice Nicks in a statement. “We are building a search engine that brings order to the chaos.”
A search engine that can translate geospatial data has many powerful use cases, says founder and CEO Jesse Kallman. The Georgia Tech graduate moved back to Atlanta in 2017 to open up Airbus Aerial’s offices in Atlanta. (You can read his Q&A with Hypepotamus from that time here). Homeowners and investors might query: ‘How old is the roof on my house?’ Or ‘What are the natural disaster risk factors for my property?’
For those in the defense industry, Danti can answer questions like: ‘What tanks have moved in Eastern Ukraine over the last 48 hours?’
Translating Earth Data
Danti works by crawling and indexing imagery repositories and making those images searchable with AI (artificial intelligence) and NLP (natural language processing) technologies.
As Danti launches here in 2023, Kallman said he’s brought on industry-leading aerospace, space, and geospatial experts. Employees have recently worked at Palantir, C3 AI, Maxar, and Airbus. He said that while the defense industry is an early target market, insurance, property investment, and industrial companies could also benefit from Danti’s platform.
The startup has only been building in stealth since February of this year. But the young team has already had some early signs of success. Danti recently won an open challenge with geoSpatial Environment for Access, Retrieval & Content Hosting (“gSEARCH”) program, which is put on by the National Security Innovation Network (NSIN) and sponsored by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA).
Danti has also caught the attention of early-stage investors in town.
The startup is coming out of stealth mode with the announcement of a $2.75 million pre-seed round led by Atlanta-based Tech Square Ventures.
Atlanta-based Overline joined the round alongside investors from across the country like Radius Capital, Philip Krim and Raven One Ventures, SpaceVC, Jordan Noone, Keith Masback, and Jeff Crusey, according to a press statement.
Kallman told Hypepotamus that as the startup comes out of stealth it is focused on delivering value to its early customers and scaling the technology into different industries.
