The NGA Accelerator Powered by Capital Innovators recently selected eight companies from more than 350 applicants to participate in the March 23 launch of the inaugural cohort of its geospatial corporate accelerator program based in St. Louis. The NGA Accelerator is managed through a Partnership Intermediary Agreement between the Missouri Technology Corporation, NGA and Capital Innovators.

The 13-week program sources technology from startups to help solve geospatial challenges that focus on government and industry opportunities in four core areas: data management, advanced analytics and modeling, data integrity and security, and artificial intelligence.

Each company will receive a $100,000 non-dilutive grant and will receive mentoring and coaching from subject matter experts from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and Capital Innovators. The COVID-19 pandemic requires the initial cohort to be conducted virtually, but future cohorts are planned to be held in person at the accelerator.

The accelerator concludes with a public demonstration day that allows companies to highlight the progress made during the program.

“The re-emergence of great power competition is evident everywhere we look,” said Cindy Daniell, NGA Research director. “The U.S. must continue to be the world leader in driving technological superiority in geospatial intelligence, including the seamless collaboration between government and industry.”

“The NGA Accelerator is focused on developing these relationships and capabilities to accelerate the science-to-mission timeline and drive innovation and collaboration in the St. Louis area and beyond,” said Daniell.

“Capital Innovators is excited to help the selected companies prepare for opportunities to support NGA in their mission as well as effectively pursue private sector applications,” said Judy Sindecuse, CEO and managing partner of Capital Innovators.

“We are thrilled to work with this world class set of founders and their unique technologies to solve some of the most pressing problems in the geospatial community today,” said Sindecuse.

“Geospatial technology is one of the critical next generation growth sectors for the St. Louis region identified in the 2030 Jobs Plan,” said Jason Hall, CEO of Greater St. Louis, Inc.

“The NGA Accelerator and its first cohort of eight startups also advance one of the critical paths called for in the GeoFutures Strategic Roadmap,” said Hall. “We planned for the future we want as a region, and we are taking concrete steps every single day to make it happen.”

The eight startups selected for the inaugural cohort are:

• Anno.ai is a machine learning solutions, software and services company operating within the Department of Defense, intelligence community and commercial markets. Anno.ai’s innovative, massively scalable software architecture enables machine learning workflows against the most complex mission challenges.
• Boston Geospatial is a product company that leverages space-based radar imagery and other datasets to create plug-and-play, ready-to-use insight solutions for enterprise customers within the critical infrastructure sectors. Its inaugural offering utilizes interferometry to monitor ground motion for the midstream oil and gas sector.
• Granular.ai democratizes analytics for the rest of the market by simplifying access to the information locked in satellite imagery. Through the first full-stack geospatial AI platform, it enables businesses to build tailored, performant AI in days instead of months.
• InfraLytiks specializes in engineering-based data analytics and the development of custom software products, primarily focusing on proprietary machine learning, artificial intelligence and computer vision to enable automation of complex processes. It works with multispectral data such as high definition images, 3D, infrared thermography, lidar point cloud, telemetry from various data sources including satellites, drones, aircraft, vehicles, space telescopes, text and databases.
• Kinnami provides a resilient peer-to-peer distributed data management and security platform for the computing edge working with satellites, drones, IoT, autonomous systems, personal computing devices, in data centers and the cloud.
• Polysentry is a Software-as-a-Service company that automates the analysis of large datasets for the intelligence, defense, and private sector communities. As of March 2021, it has been awarded three DOD contracts and signed 12 software license agreements with commercial enterprise customers.
• Stratodyne collects high-resolution imagery from aerial balloons and analyzes it to help users predict vegetation changes, monitor assets, and detect threats in real-time.
• Xona Space Systems is building a next-generation satellite navigation system using small but powerful satellites in low-Earth orbit. The constellation they are developing is designed to provide secure navigation and timing services with the resilience and accuracy that modern intelligent systems, such as autonomous vehicles and drones, need to operate safely at scale.

The second cohort of the accelerator, funded through the partnership, is projected to launch in late August and Capital Innovators will begin soliciting applications in late April or early May. Entrepreneurs interested in participating in the upcoming cohort should visit the Capital Innovators website for more information.