Jupiter in the news

Jupiter Intelligence, a startup that sells climate change impact data to governments and private industry, raised $23 million in Series B funding led by Energize Ventures. Why it’s the BFD: Because our failure to effectively mitigate climate change means that we now must deal with its consequences. “Jupiter has aggressively hired top talent from government climate labs, both for its executive ranks and at the staff level, and is especially well-positioned to tackle systemic risk for the insurance sector. It’s no accident that insurance companies, especially the major reinsurers, have been advocating for climate action long before many politicians did; they’re afraid of sinking under a rising tide of natural disaster costs.”

Data analytics company Jupiter Intelligence works with public sector agencies and private companies in real estate, insurance, energy and infrastructure to help them assess and plan for climate-related risks. The company has secured $23 million in Series B funding backed by energy-focused investment firm Energize Ventures, impact investor SYSTEMIQ, and insurance firms QBE, Mitsui MS&AD and Nephila.

As natural disasters increase in frequency and severity, cities and the businesses that reside in them are mobilizing to understand how best to prepare for the climatological challenges they’re going to face — and increasingly they’re turning to companies like Jupiter Intelligence for information.

Rich Sorkin is the founder and CEO of Jupiter Intelligence, a startup delivering hyperlocal climate predictions using cloud computing.

Jupiter is a company staffed in part by climatologists and other scientists and provides climate change risk assessments for projects and government agencies.

“It joins the mounting evidence about the scope and magnitude of climate-change impacts,” says Jupiter Intelligence director Julie Pullen, an ocean scientist at Jupiter Intelligence who reviewed an earlier version of the report. And because the report drills down into the local-scale impacts, Pullen adds, it gives Americans a realistic view of exactly how climate change influences their day-to-day experiences.

Richard Sorkin, co-founder of Jupiter Intel, said politics and other factors can keep government-provided maps from being the most comprehensive flood maps available. Jupiter works to create flood maps using the latest in cloud-computing technology to account for all factors that lead to flooding. The company has a team of experts, including a Nobel Prize winner, that works with governments and companies to provide the most up-to-date information on property risks.

Today we are pleased to announce our partnership with Brooklyn College and an extended team of academic and private institutions to study urban flooding in New York City and measures to improve resilience. Jupiter is leading the scientific modeling, essential to comprehending current and future rain and flood scenarios. The team has already completed its first milestone, a proof of concept, and is actively using Jupiter’s scientific models on our ClimateScore™ cloud computing platform.

“We live in a world designed for an environment that no longer exists,” says Rich Sorkin, the co-founder of Jupiter Intelligence, a company that models climate-induced risk. Accepting the reality of what future will look like, he says, is key to planning for it—and studies like this, he says, highlight just how quickly we’ll all have to adapt.

Despite the impact of the global pandemic, Jupiter added several new marquee customers in the past year and looks forward to the Biden Administration’s investments and policies in science, greenhouse gas reduction, and resilience.

The 100 companies on the list represent the private, independent, and for-profit companies best positioned to contribute to a more digitized, de-carbonized and resource-efficient future. Jupiter’s climate change risk analytics were selected among winners from 15 countries and various industries.

Zurich’s Global Innovation team chose Jupiter from among more than 1,300 submissions from companies in 43 countries around the world.

“2020 has proven beyond a doubt that the private sector has much work to do to prepare for future disruptions, and this is especially true regarding the risks that climate change presents to the stability of financial markets,” Keenan said. “I’m excited to join Jupiter on their mission to not only help organizations adapt to the shocks and stresses of climate change, but to also take advantage of the opportunities for sustainable investment.”

ClimateScore Global™ is a next-generation climate risk analytics tool that provides physical risk assessment designed to support decision-making across a wide range of industries—for any point on the land surface of the planet through the year 2100.

“With the support of industry leaders including Liberty Mutual and MS&AD, Jupiter will continue to deepen our analytics to help customers make complex financial decisions as they emerge from a global economic crisis,” said Rich Sorkin, CEO and Co-Founder.

The $1M grant will go towards the deployment of Jupiter’s FireScore™ Operations service, a wildfire threat and intelligence platform, to accelerate readiness for the 2020 wildfire season.

Jupiter today announced an agreement with the Hawaiian Electric Companies to provide ongoing climate risk analytics services for generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure across five major islands of Hawaii. Jupiter also recently announced a capital investment from Elemental Excelerator (Elemental), a global infrastructure innovation accelerator. The funding, as part of Elemental’s Demonstration Track, will enable Jupiter to accelerate deployment of its flood and wind risk analytics services in the Pacific, beginning in Hawaii.