Australian geospatial data analytics startup MapAI, specializing in generative AI, has announced the close of a $1.3 million funding round.
The funding round, supported by FrontierSI and UNSW Sydney, will accelerate the commercial deployment of CarteAI‘s platform, which takes plain language queries and interprets them to produce geospatial data presentations.
MapAI’s generative AI technology produces the code between the query and the data.
“For us, generative AI means creating geospatial software code that can be run on data to answer a question,” said Phil Delaney, CEO of MapAI. Space source.
“It’s basically a link between a person’s question and complex geospatial data, to help find an answer to that question.”
This data can be either internal customer data, publicly available data, or both.
“Early next year, we will release a public demo version based on freely available data, particularly government data. But the main goal of MapAI is to help organizations enable chat with their existing data,” Delaney said.
According to Delaney, access to open data made available by government agencies is vital.
“Our ability to test and introduce MapAI to new customers actually relies on open government data,” he said. “And it’s by demonstrating our value through this data that we are then able to help businesses and government customers ‘turn on the chat’ with their data.”
MapAI is a fantastic Australian success story, having been incubated within BorderSI.
“We started a research project about 12 months ago with UNSW, and FrontierSI set up the company about six months ago,” Delaney said.
“UNSW is proud to continue its role as the research engine behind MapAI,” said Professor Chris Pettit, Director of UNSW. Center for Research on the Future of Cities where the fundamental technology behind MapAI was developed.
“This funding not only fuels the next stage of development, but also reinforces our commitment to translating our cutting-edge research into real-world products. »
Commenting on the new $1.3 million funding round, FrontierSI CEO Graeme Kernich said: “Our continued support of MapAI aligns with FrontierSI’s goal of solving problems using our geospatial expertise.” .
“MapAI creates solutions that not only enable users to interact with their data and make better decisions, but also creates tools that provide a broader set of users with insights they simply haven’t had before. access in the past,” he said.
“The primary goal of the funding is to help evolve our technology from a beta phase and turn it into a product that anyone can purchase and deploy on top of their data,” Delaney said, adding that it will also be used. to expand “our partnership with UNSW, because there’s certainly still a research component to that; It’s such a new technology.”
Even at the beta stage, MapAI has proofs of concept running with Geelong Council, Tamworth Council and ID Consulting, with its first major commercial activity stream coming soon to provide the Urban co-pilot project with Archistar And Property Exchange Australia (PEXA).
The three-year, $6.5 million Urban Copilot initiative aims to redefine urban planning through advanced AI solutions with MapAI funded as the lead technology provider.
Urban Copilot is “trying to identify the types of land where development should take place, then dramatically speeding up the process of determining what is possible and feasible in a location, and then going through the process of actually generating the planning documents. that you have to submit to start a development,” Delaney said.
You can watch video demonstrations of MapAI technology on the company YouTube channel.
