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Vancouver based startup Metaspectral has raised $4.7M in its seed round for its AI cloud-based software Fusion platform that can analyze hyperspectral data in real-time.
This year the company has already had two notable announcements including being part of a consortium that will do an agriculture emissions study on a Wyvern satellite. The second announcement was for a greenhouse gas monitoring project funded by the Canadian Space Agency and which will see a sensor placed on the International Space Station.
Metaspectral’s AI cloud-based advancing computer vision software platform uses deep learning and hyperspectral imagery to provide insights from data collected from sensors in low earth orbit.
Metaspectral’s $4.7 million seed round investor include SOMA Capital, Acequia Capital, the Government of Canada, and multiple notable angel investors including Jude Gomila and Alan Rutledge.
The funds will be used to support additional team members and further development of the Fusion platform ahead of a fall launch.
According to Metaspectral, “Fusion makes it easy for those with or without technical expertise to train and deploy deep learning models that analyze hyperspectral imagery in real-time. Hyperspectral images contain information from the electromagnetic spectrum, making it possible to identify the chemical composition and other invisible properties of materials with computer vision.”
Francis Doumet, Metaspectral CEO and Co-Founder said, “The platform can visually detect defects on a manufacturing line, classify plastic polymers, quantify greenhouse gas levels on the Earth’s surface, and has countless other applications. We have spent the last three years developing this technology and it is already being used in the aerospace, defense, agriculture, manufacturing, and other significant industries.”
Migel Tissera, CTO and Co-Founder of Metaspectral added, “Hyperspectral images include up to 300 unique spectral bands instead of the usual three that conventional color cameras capture. This results in a tremendous volume of data that our technology is uniquely designed to handle. We have developed novel data compression algorithms which allow us to shuttle hyperspectral data better and faster, whether from orbit-to-ground (in space) or within terrestrial networks (on Earth). We combine this with our advances in deep learning to perform subpixel level analysis, allowing us to extract more insights than conventional computer vision because our data contains more information on the spectral dimension.”
While Metaspectral would not list all its clients, we already knew about the Canadian Space Agency International Space Station award, and its participation in Wyvern’s Sustainable Development Technology Canada award. New to the list is Defence Research Development Canada (DRDC), and “one of the largest recyclers in Canada.”
