Chinese 3D map provider raises $14m

Existing investors Ivy Capital, GGV Capital and Baidu Ventures have re-upped. GGV Capital led the company’s RMB50 million Series B in 2018.

Founded in 2015, Airlook specializes in aeronautical data collection and analysis. It relies mainly on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for data collection. The company's first customer was the local government of Daxing, a district of Beijing, which wanted maps of an area earmarked for demolition and redevelopment. Local residents have been known to expand their properties ahead of compulsory purchase in order to inflate compensation levels. Airlook provided accurate images prior to the announcement.

Yanze Wang, the company's founder and CEO - and before that an employee of Baidu - said the Daxing case made him realize that governments would be a strong source of demand. They need three-dimensional maps for urban management, from detecting illegal construction to planning new bridges and roads.

In the past 12 months, Airlook has signed strategic partnerships with a dozen of provincial governments to build up and regularly update maps. These data can be used for the smart city initiatives as well as fire protection and ecology.

Wang noted that these services are only available as a result of drone development. “With helicopters, it would be too expensive for any local government to pursue such data,” he said Wang.

Airlook differentiates itself from the competition by functioning across WiFi and mobile networks. The huge amount of data it generates puts enormous pressure on networks, potentially resulting in traffic loss. The company addresses this problem through strong compression capabilities, cloud loading, and the optimization of the algorithms.

New innovations include DataMaker, a data editing and analysis engine that allows users to focus on very specific areas, such as individual buildings, and explore them separately from the main platform.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• Early-stage
• China
• GGV Capital
• Ivy Capital
• Baidu