ai/”>dantiAn artificial intelligence company building a super-powerful search engine for Earth data, has hired prominent defensive technology investor Shield Capital as it looks to scale its technology for government clients.
Founded by Jesse Kallman in early 2023, Danti has developed a natural language search engine for data that has historically been highly siled, such as satellite imagery, matching it with other commercial and government sources to report across multiple sources and domains.
For example, an analyst may ask a complex question in simple language, such as “What are the latest tank movements in eastern Ukraine?” and receive simple answers collected through data sources.
The idea is to train a single analyst to do more, Kallman said in a recent interview. While American adversaries are devoting manpower to the problem of analyzing enormous amounts of data, Danti aims to help “one analyst do the job of 10 or 15,” she said. It means that a relatively simple question – where a particular ship is located off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria, for example – can be answered in seconds, rather than hours.
“We are not going to replace analysts,” Kallman clarified. “We're helping them do their job much faster, so they can get to the part that humans are much better at, which is synthesizing and deciding, 'What do I do now with this information?' How do I want to report about it?' “
Among the startup's first customers is the US Space Force, which uses Danti's product to help officers easily find and share data. The use of natural language models in the search engine means an intuitive and simple user experience; This is certainly paramount in high-pressure situations where analysts must make complex decisions but have little time to trawl through reams of satellite or drone data.
Right now, Danti is completely focused on the government, although in the long term he plans to launch a version of his product for the commercial industry. This version would focus on property records, parcel information and risk data, to serve markets such as electric utilities and insurance, Kallman said. Customers will also be able to connect their own information to Danti's engine to use its natural language processing to query their own data.
The $5 million round was led by Shield Capital and includes participation from the startup's existing investors tech Square Ventures, Humba Ventures and Leo Polovets, Space.VC and Radius Capital. Kallman said the startup deliberately sought a defense-focused fund to lead its next round, particularly as the company looks to execute its government commercialization plan and expand its engineering team.
Since last summer, when the company announced its $2.75 million pre-seedThe team has grown to more than twenty people and Kallman said the engineering team will grow even more with the new injection of funds.
