Shantel
Reask, the risk data company applying artificial intelligence (AI) to interpret and forecast global extreme weather conditions, today announced it has raised a total of $6.55M in investment funding. Its most recent $4.6M seed round was co-led by Mastry Ventures and Collaborative Fund, with participation from Macdoch Ventures and existing pre-seed investor Tencent, alongside pre-seed investors SV Angel and Hawktail.
Reask provides high-resolution weather risk analytics and forecasting to calculate the severity and frequency of extreme weather events on earth, anywhere, anytime. By applying AI across multiple sources of climate data, Reask delivers proprietary weather modeling algorithms that learn climate physics to offer dynamic forward-looking representations of atmospheric risk. This approach provides critical insights and intelligence to insurers and asset managers, which need more accurate weather catastrophe forecasting but are limited to unreliable and inadequate methods based on static historical statistics.
A key focus for Reask and its technology is tropical cyclones, which have caused in excess of USD $1 trillion in total economic damage globally over the last ten years. Less than 50% of those economic damages were insured. The severity of damage from tropical cyclones are projected to worsen with climate change, posing an alarming and growing threat to organizations worldwide.
“The ability to accurately forecast and measure the behavior of tropical cyclones has always been extremely challenging, especially given their complex interaction with the climate and propensity to damage land-based observational equipment,” says Jamie Rodney, CEO of Reask. “Organizations need a clearer view on how extreme weather is changing, so they can adequately prepare for any impact to their physical assets, infrastructure, business models, and customers. Our goal is to bring this information more quickly and efficiently to people and industries so we can help those who need it most and before there is an urgent need for help.”
“Ballooning industry loss rates, most recently underscored by State Farm & Allstate’s complete withdrawal from new policy issuance across home and commercial lines in California, illustrate why new approaches to extreme weather risk management must be adopted,” says Co-Founder and General Partner Sam Landman at Mastry Ventures. “Reask’s team has spent years investing in their technology platform, which has now been validated by many of the world’s most sophisticated leaders in risk analysis. We’re excited to see the continued adoption of their product across the insurance and financial services industries and believe the company is well positioned to become the new standard.”
The global insurance industry directly requires more dynamic extreme weather forecasting to price risk. Other industries including financial services, logistics, real estate, and natural resources also need better climate models to analyze hazards. With its latest funding, Reask will add more hazard coverage and grow its team internationally to better service customers in these growing markets.
“Our mission at Collab has always been to support businesses and technology that are pushing the world forward,” says Guy Vidra, Partner at Collaborative Fund. “Reask’s ground-up, physics based approach to climate analytics technology makes it possible to predict the outcomes and risks of extreme weather, allowing insurers to prepare themselves and others for the worst. We’re thrilled to support the Reask team as they continue to build out their capabilities.”
“I’m excited to continue working with Reask to develop innovative methods for better understanding and quantifying the risks of natural hazards like tropical cyclones [and wildfires],” saysDaniel Swain, climate scientist at UCLA. “Using approaches deeply rooted in physical science are critical in producing reliable estimates that can keep up with a warming climate, so the Reask approach is one that’s designed for today’s challenges.”
About Reask
Reask is a science and technology company applying cutting-edge data science to natural hazard modeling. By applying AI to better capture global drivers of extreme weather frequency and severity, Reask can efficiently simulate probabilistic views of ground level risk at extremely high resolution. Early adopters include (re)insurance giants AXA and Swiss Re as well as a Big 4 accounting firm. To learn more, please visit https://reask.earth/.
