The Rise Fund, TPG’s global impact investing platform, has announced a US$100m strategic investment in Climavision, a newly launched weather services and intelligence platform powered by a private network of high-resolution radars, GPS-RO data and proprietary software to vastly improve the timing and accuracy of weather forecasting and to fill low-level gaps in existing weather surveillance.
Climavision was formed out of Enterprise Electronics Corporation (EEC), a commercial supplier of weather radar systems. EEC has a 50-year history and more than 1,200 installations across 95 countries. According to Climavision, by combining lower altitude, proprietary data with machine learning and AI technology, its offering provides 10x higher resolution and more accurate forecasting to address critical coverage gaps left by existing radar networks across the USA.
Climavision has also formed an exclusive agreement with GPS-RO provider GeoOptics to enhance forecasts by leveraging its private network of radio-occultation satellites. With improved weather nowcasting and forecasting, Climavision’s technology and data solutions enable customers across industries including agriculture, drones, government, insurance, logistics, media, renewables and transportation, to make cost-effective and potentially life-saving decisions in real time.
“As weather patterns become increasingly unpredictable and volatile due to climate change, the need for higher-quality regional and hyper local weather data has never been more pronounced,” said Climavision co-founder and CEO Chris Goode. “Climavision’s increased coverage and improved weather information enables earlier and more accurate weather forecasts that can save lives, limit business disruption and improve the lives of people and communities across the country.”
“Legacy radar systems have often left decision makers with an incomplete picture of the weather-related challenges they face,” said Edward Beckley, partner at TPG and senior member of The Rise Fund’s climate investing team. “The rollout of low altitude radar sites will provide proprietary data to Climavision’s innovative AI-driven software platform, facilitating next-generation weather forecasting. As the need for efficient and accurate climate solutions becomes increasingly urgent, we look forward to working with Chris and his expert team of industry veterans to expand the reach of these crucial insights.”