WindBorne Systems on October 12 signs nearly $50 million balloon weather data contract with the U.S. Air Force

The U.S. Air Force on October 12 awarded WindBorne Systems a contract under which it will buy data collected by the startup's autonomous weather balloons; the contract is worth up to nearly $50 million on a pay-as-needed basis, with about $1.7 million in orders placed so far. WindBorne currently flies around 700 weather balloons globally, collecting atmospheric sensor readings that are fed into its deep learning weather forecasting system. The contract was awarded without competitive bidding, reflecting the government's determination that WindBorne is the only company able to provide the global data collection capability the Air Force needs. Founded in 2015 and based in Redwood City, California, WindBorne closed a $37 million Series B in August and recently released the WeatherMesh 6 forecasting model, which it says is more accurate than the traditional ECMWF physics-based model. In August, WindBorne became the first organization to send an unpowered flight system into the eye of a typhoon to collect data, marking one of the first times a deep learning model was used for actual operational decisions.