Vaisala has signed an agreement to acquire Atmo, a San Francisco-based company touted by Vaisala as a leader in the AI transformation of meteorology. The acquisition brings AI weather forecasting technology in-house, with Vaisala saying the combined company will become the leading weather technology provider in the world, from sensor to insight.
The acquisition is valued at a fixed purchase price of US$70m, plus a contingent earn-out of up to US$60m tied to performance and employee retention through 2028. Twenty US-based professionals, including Atmo’s founders, will join Vaisala upon closing, which is expected by the end of 2026, subject to customary regulatory approvals.
Vaisala said AI-driven forecasting models are changing a paradigm that for decades has required national-scale infrastructure, including supercomputers, extensive observation networks and large teams of meteorologists. In contrast, the new models reportedly produce accurate forecasts more quickly and using far less computing power. Atmo has served defense and meteorological organizations in the US and Asia-Pacific, and its technology was named one of Time magazine’s best inventions of 2024.
Vaisala said the combination brings together close to a century of weather domain expertise and observation technology trusted by meteorological agencies in more than 150 countries with Atmo’s frontier AI forecasting models, giving weather-dependent organizations a single partner spanning sensing to actionable insight.
The acquisition is intended to accelerate the technology roadmap of Vaisala Xweather, the company’s weather intelligence business, which has grown by double-digit percentages every year since it was established in 2022. Vaisala said Atmo’s platform is expected to accelerate that growth and aligns with its strategic priority to grow services and software revenue.
“AI has already delivered more progress in forecasting speed and accuracy in the past two years than in the entire preceding decade,” said Samuli Hänninen, executive vice president of Vaisala Xweather. “At Vaisala Xweather, we already serve over 40% of Fortune 100 companies with weather intelligence. Together with Atmo’s leading AI team, we have everything we need to help meteorological agencies and defense organizations lead the AI era of weather.”
“Atmo pioneered AI weather forecasting and proved it in the field with governments and defense organizations worldwide,” said Alexander Levy, co-founder and CEO of Atmo. “Delivering Atmo’s breakthroughs to everyone takes trust and reach, and Vaisala has both, earned over nearly a century across 150 countries. Vaisala’s vast weather sensing network and Atmo’s AI models are a combination no competitor can replicate. This is how we scale AI meteorology across the planet.”
In related news, Vaisala launches AWS810 Airport Edition automatic weather station