This AI weather startup is out-forecasting government agencies
Key takeaways
- Founded by a group of Stanford students in 2019, Windborne began by building a better weather balloon, with the idea of selling weather data.
- Windborne says the new version of its model offers a more accurate forecast than the ECMWF s traditional and AI systems across several variables.
- WeatherMesh 6 produces a forecast every hour, as opposed to every six hours, as traditional models do.
A new AI weather forecasting tool released today by the startup Windborne Systems offers more frequent and accurate predictions on key variables than the world-leading system developed by European governments, thanks to advancements in how sensor readings are fed into deep learning models.
Founded by a group of Stanford students in 2019, Windborne began by building a better weather balloon, with the idea of selling weather data. But the arrival of the weather-forecasting deep learning models in 2022, the team realized they could capture more value by building their own model as well.
Today marks the release of the sixth version of that model, WeatherMesh, which the company says is more accurate than traditional and AI forecasts produced by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF), the European intergovernmental organization seen by meteorologists as the leading provider of accurate weather prediction today.