WindBorne Secures a Large US Air Force Contract for Its Balloon Data

Title: WindBorne Systems U.S. Air Force Data Contract May Reach $49 Million

Meta description: WindBorne Systems, founded in 2015, has a U.S. Air Force contract worth up to $49 million for data from autonomous weather balloons and AI forecasts.

Tags: WindBorne Systems, WeatherMesh 6, U.S. Air Force, AI weather forecasting, weather balloons

Featured image: abstract network of autonomous weather balloons and atmospheric data streams over a globe, no text, no logos.

WindBorne Systems will supply atmospheric data from its autonomous weather balloon fleet to the U.S. Air Force under a new contract that could be worth nearly $50 million. The agreement lets the Air Force request observations from specific regions at specific times and pay only as it needs data. For WindBorne, the same balloon network supports both data sold to customers and its AI weather forecasting model.

2015: a balloon network built for atmospheric data

WindBorne Systems was founded in 2015 and is based in Redwood City, California. Its fleet currently includes about 700 weather balloons operating around the globe. The balloons gather atmospheric sensor readings that the company sells to customers and uses in its own AI weather forecasting model. It is among the first organizations to directly supply empirical data to a deep-learning weather model.

The company has worked closely with U.S. government bodies, especially the National Weather Service, the U.S. Air Force, and the Navy. This Air Force contract is the largest single contract WindBorne has participated in.

Earlier this summer: WeatherMesh 6 and AI forecasting

Earlier this summer, WindBorne released the latest version of its forecasting model, WeatherMesh 6. The company says it provides more accurate forecasts than the traditional model run by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which simulates the atmosphere using the laws of physics.

The release came amid changes in weather forecasting. Since transformer model architectures appeared and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts released a massive weather dataset a few years ago, AI weather forecasting has emerged as a productive application of deep learning. Before that shift, forecasters often used costly supercomputers to run detailed equations approximating atmospheric behavior. End-to-end learning can now process decades of weather records and generate forecasts faster.

Some models from frontier labs and government agencies have shown higher accuracy than traditional forecasts, but the field remains uneven, and both forecast types are still needed for a useful picture of weather. Google DeepMind's latest weather model adds important capabilities, and its cyclone forecasting tools have become more central to U.S. government hurricane-season response.

August: Series B funding and typhoon-eye flight

In August, WindBorne CEO John Dean told TechCrunch that the company had raised a $37 million Series B round to continue scaling its business. Also in August, WindBorne became the first organization to send an unpowered flight system, one with no engine, to collect data in the eye of a typhoon.

WindBorne guides the balloons by changing altitude, releasing air, or dropping sand carried as ballast, placing them in winds that take them where they need to go.

"That's a pretty novel step, and the two ingredients for that are one, having good wind and weather models, and knowing how to navigate them; and two, having a large enough constellation that you have balloons in the right places," co-founder and chief technology officer Andrey Sushko said. "It's one of the first times that a deep-learning model was used for actual operational decisions."

Air Force contract: $49 million ceiling, $1.7 million in orders so far

The contract is worth up to $49 million, but the Air Force pays only as it needs data. It can place orders for specific regions at specific times. So far, it has ordered $1.7 million worth, and executives expect more orders to follow.

"This is largely a vehicle through which continued growth of the constellation can be supported, as well as some work on research and development to continue to improve the hardware and performance of the balloons," WindBorne co-founder and chief technology officer Andrey Sushko told TechCrunch. He added that the contract, which was awarded without competitive bidding, is "a determination by the government that for this capability of collecting global data, we were the only company able to provide it in the way that met their needs for these operations."

Current stage: operational data and pay-as-needed orders

WindBorne is now at an operational stage in which its balloon constellation supplies atmospheric sensor readings to customers, feeds its AI weather forecasting model, and supports Air Force data orders. The contract structure does not commit the Air Force to pay the full $49 million immediately; it pays for data as requested. The next development is whether additional orders follow the initial $1.7 million as the company expands the constellation and continues hardware and performance work.