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TerraByte takes its ‘Earth Search Engine’ to the next level

Screenshot of TerraByte News' interactive map, focused on events being tracked in U.S.
An interactive map displays the sites of wildfires, earthquakes and severe weather events, with links to satellite imagery. (Credit: TerraByte)

Two months after emerging from stealth mode, TerraByte AI is using artificial intelligence and a new partnership to upgrade its “Earth Search Engine.”

The startup, which maintains operations in Seattle as well as San Francisco, has just rolled out a TerraByte News service that pinpoints wildfires, earthquakes and severe weather events on an interactive map. Users can follow links to access news reports, social media posts and satellite views related to selected events.

The satellite views include open-source images from NASA’s Earth observation system as well as Europe’s Sentinel satellites. And now the database also features high-resolution pictures provided through a newly announced partnership with Texas-based SkyFi. The partnership gives TerraByte’s users access to SkyFi’s self-service Earth intelligence platform, which offers satellite and aerial imagery from more than 300 sources at prices as low as $15 per image.

“In May, when we came out of stealth, we made the planet searchable,” TerraByte CEO Rishi Madhok told me. “Now, the moment you find something, you can hold the imagery in your hands within a day. The next step is making Earth intelligence as routine as a web search — you ask, you see, and then you act.”

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TerraByte creates ‘Earth Search Engine’ for satellite data

Screenshot of TerraByte AI's Earth Search Engine
TerraByte’s software platform pinpoints cargo ships, warehouses, solar farms, mining sites and areas of deforestation. (Credit: TerraByte AI)

A stealthy Seattle startup called TerraByte AI is unveiling a software platform that uses artificial intelligence to sift through real-time satellite data for geospatial gems.

TerraByte’s “Earth Search Engine” analyzes streams of satellite imagery, recognizes features of interest and connects the dots through natural-language queries. The platform’s key advantage is that its data set doesn’t have to go through the laborious, expensive process of manual annotation.

“We’re just using self-supervised learning techniques to essentially understand the pixels without having to manually annotate it,” CEO and co-founder Rishi Madhok told me.

“There are many applications that you can do, like identifying power-line segments, finding parking lots near highways without EV charging stalls, watching container ships entering port,” he explained. “If you want to monitor the Strait of Hormuz, you can use our models to do that. Deforestation areas, open-pit mining in Arizona — all of these are very different concepts, but our model is able to understand them because it’s a foundational model.”

TerraByte is laying out its approach this week in Huntsville, Ala., at an ESA-NASA workshop on AI models for Earth observation.

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