Weather intelligence platform ClimaCell right now introduced that it has raised a $77 million Series D funding spherical led by personal fairness agency Stonecourt Capital, with participation by Highline Capital. This brings the corporate’s whole funding to about $185 million. In addition to the brand new funding, ClimaCell introduced that it has modified its identify to Tomorrow.io, with “The Tomorrow Companies Inc.” as its new authorized identify.
Today’s announcement comes solely a month after the corporate introduced that it will launch a fleet of small radar-equipped climate satellites to enhance its climate monitoring and forecasting capabilities. That’s additionally, no less than partially, the place the identify change comes from.
Originally, ClimaCell/Tomorrow.io built out a novel technology to gather climate knowledge utilizing wi-fi community infrastructure and IoT gadgets. That’s the place the “cell” in ClimaCell got here from. But as the corporate’s CEO and co-founder Shimon Elkabetz informed me, whereas the corporate isn’t abandoning this method, its focus right now is a lot broader.
“The mission is really to help countries, businesses, organizations, to better manage their weather-related challenges,” he mentioned. “And the ambition was always to be that largest weather enterprise in the world, the most disruptive, the most industry-defining. And I think this is the perfect timing for us to come up with a new name, not only because of the funding but because we were able to explain to ourselves that really, we’re helping others take control of tomorrow, today.”
That’s one thing Stonecourt accomplice Rock Davis agrees with. “While the company’s growth has been tremendous since launch, there is a larger opportunity at play here,” he mentioned. “What Tomorrow.io is building, corroborated by their recent announcement of launching radar-equipped satellites into space, is only further proof that this company represents the future of weather forecasting for the entire planet. The privatization of the weather industry is now, and that type of vision is what compels the team here at Stonecourt Capital.”
As Elkabetz famous, Tomorrow.io isn’t a typical funding for a personal funding agency like Stonecourt. Last yr, the agency acquired 365 Data Centers, but it surely is additionally backing the Denver-based freight rail firm Alpenglow Rail, for instance.
And whereas a lot of Tomorrow.io’s clients noticed their enterprise decline through the pandemic (the corporate counts Uber and Delta amongst its customers, for instance), Elkabetz tells me that its group centered on diversifying its buyer base and managed to enroll quite a lot of giant logistics firms, together with main railways within the U.S. and Mexico, but in addition smaller firms within the drone, autonomous driving and electrical car area. In whole, the corporate says, it noticed a 200% internet income retention price and its annual contract worth grew 850% through the previous two years.
The firm plans to make use of the brand new funding to launch extra satellites, but in addition to enhance its total product and speed up its go-to-market actions.
“We’re an interesting company because we’re a SaaS company that is now going to space,” Elkabetz mentioned. “A lot of the Earth observations companies are now scratching their heads and saying, ‘Oh, we can’t just sell observations, it’s not monetizable or becoming a commodity. We now need to become a software company and build the platform and do the analytics.’ Good luck.”
