$49 million is the ceiling on a new US Air Force contract with WindBorne Systems, TechCrunch reported on 12 October. So far the Air Force has ordered $1.7 million of data, about 3.5 percent of the maximum.
The deal is on demand. The Air Force pays only for what it orders and can request data for specific regions at specific times. It is the largest government contract the Redwood City company has won.
WindBorne flies about 700 autonomous balloons carrying atmospheric sensors. It sells the readings to customers and feeds them into its own AI forecasting model.
The contract was not competitively bid. Co-founder and chief technology officer Andrey Sushko told TechCrunch that the government determined WindBorne was the only company able to provide this global data collection.
Sushko said the money mainly supports growth of the balloon constellation, along with research and development on the balloons’ hardware and performance. The company raised a $37 million Series B earlier this year, so the contract is a meaningful addition to its funding rather than a replacement for it.
WindBorne has worked with the National Weather Service, the Air Force and the Navy before. In August it became the first organisation to send an unpowered flight system into the eye of a typhoon.
Two things are missing. The article does not say how long the contract runs, and a ceiling is not revenue. The company’s claim that its forecasting model beats the European centre’s is based on its own benchmarks, and the real test is how much of the $49 million the Air Force actually orders.
