Geospatial Intelligence Provider Descartes Labs Acquires Geosite

Geospatial analytics and artificial intelligence solutions provider Descartes Labs announced that it acquired all of the operating assets of Geosite, a Palo Alto-based SaaS provider of geospatial intelligence to property and casualty insurance companies. Descartes Labs and Geosite share a commitment to innovation and this acquisition represents a significant step towards providing enhanced geospatial solutions to meet the evolving needs of clients in various industries.

Analyzing Earth data at scale

Descartes Labs is a New Mexico-based technology company that automates the analysis of geospatial data to help organizations answer key questions about the physical world. Through its SaaS platform, Descartes Labs enables the analysis of earth observation data at scale, providing services and solutions across commodity sourcing and forecasting, resource exploration, and climate resilience, while also supporting diverse federal government efforts to gather, analyze, and provide actionable insights from geospatial data. 

Geosite’s geospatial platform aggregates, visualizes, and evaluates geospatial data, empowering users to make informed decisions. The platform leverages spatial data from satellites, drones, aerial sources, and IoT devices. Geosite’s platform for insurance consists of two components: a geospatial engine (API) called Bedrock and a visualization tool, Ascend, that displays assets and correlating data. It also provides insights on the implications of the data.

New opportunities in the insurance sector

In a statement accompanying the Geosite acquisition, Descartes Labs CEO Richard Davis commented that it aligns perfectly with the company’s growth strategy and opens up “exciting opportunities” in the insurance sector. He added that Geosite's innovative geospatial software complements Descartes Labs' capabilities, allowing them to provide even more valuable insights to our customers across various industries. Rachel Olney, CEO of Geosite, will be leading the insurance technology business within Descartes Labs, leveraging Geosite's expertise in commercial property and casualty insurance risk management, particularly with its Ascend product, which aggregates and visualizes geospatial data assisting in quantifying and managing portfolio risk related to natural catastrophe events.

In a LinkedIn post following the acquisition news, Olny writes that since its founding in 2018, Geosite has been a pioneer in the practical application and commercialization of geospatial data, transforming complex geospatial data into actionable insights, and empowering decision-makers like never before. She adds that “Geosite’s ability to bring together data from dozens of valuable and innovative geospatial, climate, and property data providers has given customers unparalleled access to a, previously inaccessible, complete situational awareness. From orchestrating search and rescue operations across the United States to enhancing climate resilience within the insurance industry, Geosite’s work demonstrates a steadfast commitment to leveraging data for significant, tangible impact.”

Descartes Labs was founded in 2014 and raised $30 million Series B for its brand of geospatial analytics in 2017, followed by another $20 million in 2019. The company launched its geospatial platform in January 2020, which brought together cloud infrastructure, APIs, hosted Jupyter Notebooks, and remote sensing data for companies that wanted to do data analysis and build machine learning models. Descartes Labs was acquired by Antarctica Capital in August 2022.