WindBorne Systems secures US Air Force weather data contract

The United States Air Force has awarded a military contract worth up to $50 million to WindBorne Systems, TechCrunch and UA.NEWS reported. Under the agreement, the military branch will purchase atmospheric data collected by the startup's fleet of autonomous weather balloons. [1][3][4]

WindBorne Systems currently operates approximately 700 weather balloons globally to gather atmospheric sensor readings, according to TechCrunch. The company sells these data sets to external customers and uses the information to power its internal artificial intelligence weather forecasting model. [1]

TechCrunch reported that the Redwood City, California-based startup was founded in 2015. WindBorne Systems is among the first organizations to feed empirical sensor data directly into a deep-learning weather prediction system, and the company has previously maintained close working ties with the United States government. [1]

The United States Air Force is part of the Department of Defense and manages air service operations, according to Wikipedia. Its core operational missions include maintaining air supremacy along with global integrated intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. [5]