askEarth receives 2.26 million Swiss francs in seed capital

(CONNECT) The start-up askEarth has closed an oversubscribed seed financing round of 2.26 million Swiss francs, according to its announcement. It was led by 42CA. Kickfund, Venture Kick, S2S Ventures, Zürcher Kantonalbank and Founderful Campus have participated. This funding, according to askEarth, "advances our mission to make satellite and geospatial data accessible to businesses". Now is the time to scale up.

According to a Venture Kick press release, askEarth will use the fresh capital to expand its sales and customer success teams, accelerate product development and expand its partner network in Europe and beyond. The spin-off from the University of Zurich (UZH) and the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology in Zurich (ETH) and Lausanne (EPFL) has developed an agent-based artificial intelligence platform that converts satellite and geodata into actionable insights for business users.

According to askEarth, despite the huge amount of freely available and up-to-date satellite Earth observation images, the knowledge gained from them is not easily accessible to the public. This platform, which askEarth also calls an answer engine in a video, uses large language models (LLMs) and is designed for widespread use in companies.

It should enable them to ask location-based questions in natural language and receive precise answers. This should optimise decision-making in sectors such as energy, insurance, commodities trading and environmental monitoring. askEarth has been collaborating with the European Space Agency (ESA) since 2024 and counts several large industrial companies among its customers. ce/mm