WindBorne wins a hefty US Air Force contract for its balloon data

The U.S. Air Force will buy data collected by WindBorne Systems‘ fleet of autonomous weather balloons under a new contract that could be worth nearly $50 million to the startup.

WindBorne currently has about 700 weather balloons flying around the globe, collecting atmospheric sensor readings that the company sells to customers and also feeds into its own AI weather forecasting model. WindBorne, founded in 2015 and based in Redwood City, Calif., is one of the first organizations to directly feed empirical data into a deep-learning weather model.

The company has worked closely with the U.S. government, particularly the National Weather Service and the U.S. Air Force and Navy, but this is the single largest contract the company has participated in. The contract is worth up to $49 million, but the Air Force pays only as it needs data. It can place orders for specific regions at specific times. So far, it has ordered $1.7 million worth, and executives expect more orders to follow.

“This is largely a vehicle through which continued growth of the constellation can be supported, as well as some work on research and development to continue to improve the hardware and performance of the balloons,” WindBorne co-founder and CTO Andrey Sushko told TechCrunch. He adds that the contract, which was awarded without competitive bidding, is “a determination by the government that for this capability of collecting global data, we were the only company able to provide it in the way that met their needs for these operations.”