Machine Learning Firm Teren Gets $4M in Seed Funding

Artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning software and content company Teren, formerly known as SolSpec, has raised $4 million in seed funding.

“The change reflects the company’s focus on analyzing how landscapes, environmental threats and asset conditions change over time through actionable 4D insights,” Teren said in a press release.

The company said the funding, led by Allos Ventures, will let it expand its workforce by 40% “to address the fast-growing remote-sensing market estimated to exceed $13 billion by 2027.”

Teren says demand for its analytics has come from the oil and gas industry, which have traditionally turned to the company to help with geological threats that can damage pipelines or pose other environmental threats.

Now, Teren wants to start creating solutions to help the insurance, solar, environmental and transportation industries address climate risks. The company says it has developed “pre-construction surveys and analytics for solar installations and pre-burn and post-burn analytics to improve wildfire mitigation and response.”

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This comes at a time when these threats are growing more and more costly. According to the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), last year saw “22 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters across the United States, shattering the previous annual record of 16 events, which occurred in 2017 and 2011.”

The NCEI said earlier this year that these events included seven disasters tied to tropical cyclones, 13 to severe storms, one to wildfires and one to drought. Altogether, these events cost the country $95 billion in damages.

The Denver-based company claims it can spot, prioritize and track potential environmental threats, processing data faster and less expensively than other solutions.

“Our customers have long been plagued by the need to identify the source of their data — be it satellite, drone or airborne — as well as the sensor type and then hire specialists to analyze the data,” said Teren Co-founder and CEO Toby Kraft. “We remove all of the inputs and focus on the business decisions our customers need to make. It’s a whole new way for our customers to assess all the external forces threatening their physical assets.”