Artificial intelligence weather forecasting platform startup Excarta today announced that it has raised $2.5 million in new funding to commercialize its weather forecasting platform.

Founded in 2022, Encatra is developing an AI-empowered business-targeted weather forecasting platform that allows businesses to produce highly accurate, high-resolution weather forecasts for the parameters they care about to gain greater efficiencies and resiliency while mitigating disasters. The cloud-based platform can utilize unlimited amounts of weather data to study and forecast weather for geographies a fraction of traditional size with great accuracy and covering longer periods.

The company says the AI-driven weather forecasts dramatically enhance situational awareness for businesses that currently rely on conventional weather models. With the platform, it says, companies benefit from more precise weather intelligence versus traditional models that are limited in the amount of data they can analyze and the resolution over an extended period. Excarta also argues that the current weather data stack is complicated to engage with, hampered by data stored in hard-to-access formats in different locations.

Excarta exploits AI models’ lower cost and higher speed to provide hourly forecasts for up to 14 days. The AI models produce ensemble forecasts to offer not just the most likely forecast but also to estimate the uncertainty in forecasts as well. The AI models can also be extended to consume other types of data for better performance on specific tasks, such as forecasting solar irradiance or electrical load on the grid.

The platform learns how to emulate the same physics as conventional weather models at a fraction of the time and cost, enabling interaction to produce needed insights. Customers can use models to cheaply create tailor-made forecasts or directly access the forecasts through Excarta’s platform without needing weather expertise.

Early customers are using the platform in industries such as energy, agtech and supply chains, in uses such as optimization of energy sources, planning operations and contingency planning.

“We are leveraging breakthroughs in the use of AI for weather modeling that mirrors the impact of using large language models like GPT in other fields,” says founder and Chief Executive Vivek Ramavajjal. “We’re harnessing these cutting-edge developments in AI to solve real business issues with speedy, actionable weather forecasts of higher accuracy than conventional forecasts.”

The $2.5 million seed round was led by Village Global Partners LLC, with Ubiquity Ventures Management LLC, Converge Venture Capital Fund I LP and several individual investors also participating. Prior to the round, the company had raised $500,000 in early-stage funding.

Image: Excarta