Elon Musk might have another competitor on his hands following the news that the satellite constellation company Tomorrow.io Inc. has just closed on a bumper $175 million in funding.

The money was provided by Stonecourt Capital and HarbourVest, and the company said today it will use it to accelerate the deployment of DeepSky, which aims to become the world’s first artificial intelligence-native weather satellite constellation.

The startup, which was formerly known as ClimaCell, calls itself as a provider of “weather intelligence” services to businesses, governments and consumers. Its goal is to move beyond traditional weather forecasting and drive proactive and actionable insights by combining its proprietary radar satellites with AI and internet of things-based data.

Tomorrow.io has been described as the “SpaceX of weather” because of its ambitious plans to create a constellation of private satellites in low-Earth orbit, which can provide higher-resolution coverage of global weather conditions in real time.

The startup says its satellite-based constellation can be combined with AI to enhance weather forecasting. Existing AI-powered forecasting systems are constrained by the density, diversity and timeliness of atmospheric observations, it says. And legacy satellite infrastructure does not provide real-time signals, which makes algorithmic forecasting less accurate than it should be.

The DeepSky constellation is meant to address this gap. Though the startup already has a small constellation of 13 satellites in orbit, it will populate the skies with many more in future. By expanding its network of multi-sensor satellites, DeepSky will dramatically increase revisit rates, expand coverage in data-sparse regions, and facilitate faster refresh cycles for weather forecasting models by providing them with close to real-time data.

Tomorrow.io’s 13 satellites have currently achieved a 60-minute global revisit rate, which means they fly above the same spot anywhere on Earth once per hour, but it wants to provide much more timely updates than this, while adding to the sensing capabilities of its satellites.

Co-founder and Chief Executive Shimon Elkabetz said weather is one of the most powerful forces and has a major impact on people’s lives, businesses, the global economy and national security. “If we could fundamentally change how the planet is observed, we could change how decisions are made at every level,” he said. “By combining AI-native space infrastructure with real-time intelligence, we are building the most impactful weather technology platform in the world – one designed not just to forecast the future, but to help governments, industries and communities act on it.”

Although it aims to get much better, Tomorrow.io already provides atmospheric intelligence to more than 250 organizations globally, facilitating applications ranging supply chain optimization, infrastructure resilience, climate adaptation and early warning systems.

One of its biggest customers is Amazon Web Services Inc., which leverages the startup’s weather intelligence to improve its operational resilience. AWS is also the startup’s primary cloud services provider, hosting offerings such as the Tomorrow.io Weather Intelligence Platform through the AWS Marketplace. In addition, Amazon.com Inc. leverages the startup’s data to power Big Sky, the primary weather application on Amazon Alex Echo devices.

Amazon’s senior director of planning and supply chain operations, Nikhil Ahuja, said operational resilience depends on treating atmospheric data with the same rigor as any other mission-critical infrastructure. “The advancement in sensing and rapid refresh frequency DeepSky enables creates a new class of AI-driven decision systems that are more adaptive and localized,” he said.

HarbourVest Partners Managing Director Peter Lipson said Tomorrow.io is uniquely positioned at the intersection of space, data and critical decision-making. “It represents a rare combination of differentiated technology, real commercial traction, global positive impact and a management team that has consistently executed against an ambitious vision,” he added.

Image: Tomorrow.io