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Understory (company)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Understory (founded in 2012 as WInstruments)[1] is a company that forecasts weather and collects data using a grid of weather-sensing hardware that tracks weather from the ground level.

History

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Although originally known as WInstruments, founder and CEO Alex Kubicek changed the company name to Subsidence and joined Gener8tor, a group in Madison, Wisconsin that provides funding to startups.[2] After receiving funding from Gener8tor, the company moved to Boston to the Bolt hardware accelerator.[3] Kubicek soon renamed the company “Understory,” and combined funding from Gener8tor and Bolt came to $68,000.[4] After raising $1.9 million in seed funding led by True Ventures, with participation by RRE Ventures, Vegas Tech Fund, SK Ventures, and Andrew C. Payne, the company moved from Madison to Boston, Massachusetts.[4][5]

Headquarters was set up in Somerville at the clean tech incubator, Greentown Labs, and the company set up pilot tests in Kansas City, Missouri, Dallas, Texas, and Boston.[6][5] Series A funding resulted in another $7.5 million for the company, co-led by 4490 Ventures and Monsanto Growth Ventures and joined by CSA Partners, True Ventures, RRE Ventures, and SK Ventures.[7] The company then announced a plan to move back to Madison, Wisconsin.[6]

The company's first customer was American Family Insurance, which uses weather data to adjust claims.[8]

Device

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Understory makes solar-powered weather stations that detect three-dimensional rain, hail, wind and other weather in real-time at the ground level, instead of using atmospheric data like traditional weather detectors.[6] Each weather station is about 1 foot wide and 2 feet tall, and connects in a grid through cellular connections.[4] The stations can collect up to 3,000 data points per minute.[5]

References

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