At Sofar, our mission is to build a more sustainable future powered by ocean intelligence. We deliver large-scale ocean data to accelerate climate insights and want to scale this and bring ocean data to the masses.
We believe in ‘Oceans First.’ If we have to choose between more profit or a better ocean, we will choose the ocean, always. We only have one planet. We are all in this together, and that’s reflected in the way we work. We respect and help each other wholeheartedly. If we have to challenge ourselves, we do it with heart - we’re vocal, keep an open mind, listen to one another, have healthy discussions, and commit to a common goal. We are mission driven and focus on innovation for our customers and the planet at all times.
I’m thrilled to announce we’ve closed our Series B fundraise with a syndicate round with Union Square Ventures (USV) and the Foundry Group. Our team is at the heart of everything we do and the funding will be used to scale our teams across the board from engineering to go-to-market.
I’m excited to bring oceans to the forefront of climate action by educating the world on the impact of oceans and enabling them to take action to mitigate and adapt to climate change through ocean intelligence.
The world's oceans cover over 70% of the planet, govern our climate, and support trillions in economic activity. Despite this, they remain mostly unexplored, and poorly understood,.
Oceans are a critical component of our climate system driving global weather. Although we experience climate and weather changes primarily as atmospheric processes, a lot of what we see, like the intensification of tropical storms and hurricanes, is powered by ocean processes. Ocean data and insights are increasingly critical for successful climate mitigation and adaptation.
Over the last few decades, with advances in IoT technology and distributed sensing, we’ve become great at collecting data at scale on land and in space. Oceans represent the last big data frontier. Thousands of our IoT sensors scattered across our oceans have racked up over 5 million ocean hours and collect over 100,000 unique ocean data points every day, to deliver insights for our customers and share data with researchers.
Ocean intelligence, powered by global sensor networks, is essential to reduce weather and climate uncertainty, help industries operate more efficiently, lower operational risk, and reduce emissions. With rising sea levels and intensification of storms, accurate and abundant ocean data is needed to keep vulnerable coastal communities safe, and protect valuable infrastructure and industrial plants.
Hear what some of our investors have to say:
“Uncertainty, in any form, translates to risk. The lack of accurate ocean data increases operational uncertainty and inefficiencies for major global industries, like maritime shipping,” said Rebecca Kaden, Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures. “The financial and environmental costs of uncertainty are massive. For instance, today, 3% of global GHG emissions come from the shipping industry. Sofar’s ocean intelligence platform, powered by its global ocean sensor network, will provide insights needed to help major ocean industries, like shipping, improve inefficiencies, reduce risk, and most importantly, mitigate their climate impact.“
“Sofar has built the first ocean intelligence platform to provide valuable insights to existing and emerging ocean industries, and to drive critical progress in addressing the climate crisis,” said Lindel Eakman, Partner at Foundry Group. “Changes in climate and extreme weather are increasing uncertainty and risk and impacting every major industry in the world. As an end-to-end platform with a global ocean sensor network, data, insights, and applications, Sofar’s platform is well positioned for success with the best integrated customer experience. As a start, data and insights from the platform immediately help industries like maritime shipping reduce emissions and increase efficiency. We believe that large-scale ocean sensing and intelligence will play an increasingly important role across multiple industries in reducing climate risks and weather uncertainty.”
“To create effective solutions to the big problems affecting our oceans, like species decline, acidification and climate change, it is imperative that we have a much more complete understanding of our oceans. Better understanding starts with more pervasive data collection & aggregation,” said Kate Danaher, Managing Director of S2G Ventures, “Sofar Ocean has the most cost effective, durable and scaled solution for increasing ocean data that I have seen.”
