Kiwi AI mapping startup Hyades raises $910,000

Auckland startup Hyades, which helps companies build AI models from map-based data, such as satellite images, drone footage and radar, has banked a NZ$1.1 million (AU$990,000) pre-seed round.

The raise was led by Icehouse Ventures, supported by K1W1 and angel investors Tony Falkenstein and Tim Brown.

On top of the VC investment, Hyades has also scored a NZ$400,000 (AU$332,300) New to R&D grant from the government.

Hyades is developing a platform, still in its early alpha phase, that combines different types of complex technical information into a single understandable form to help industries such as insurance, agriculture, mining, and climate science use spatial data to improve business decision-making.

The funding will go towards securing enterprise co-design partners, AI engineering talent, and scaling the platform for wider release.

Hyades is founded by University of Auckland graduates, Ashin Alex, Sam Kurian and Jimin Seo.

Alex, previously involved in physics startup Quantified Photonics, built a ground-based optical receiver to capture and decode signals from optical communications satellites as part of his university research.

He teamed up with Kurian after seeing in a physics lecture that his now-CTO didn’t take notes, having both automated and integrated it into a single data set.

That idea became the basis for Hyades.

“Our vision is to enable AI agents to understand any set of high-dimensional data, even if it encompasses multiple forms that LLMs currently can’t really deal with,” Alex said.

“We’re tackling spatial data because it’s one of the hardest and most fragmented industries, with complex, messy data. We saw the mess as a challenge to be solved.”

He gives the example of an insurance company trying to understand future flood risk. It’s generally a time-consuming manual process of collating imagery, flood records and other data to build a useful model.

Hyades will automate much of that process, so an insurer could more quickly build a flood-risk model showing which properties or areas are most exposed to future flooding, cyclones, or wildfire risk.

“Everyone understands the need to better understand the risks from changing weather patterns and climate effects,” Alex said.

“In the wake of the Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle, as well as weather events this year, we need to be able to make better sense of the wealth of geospatial data available.”

Icehouse Ventures principal Bex Gidall said it’s rare to come across a founding team where every founder is exceptional in their own right.

“What’s even rarer is finding one where they’re stronger together than they are individually. Ash, Sam and Jimin stood out to us for exactly that reason,” he said

“Ash has a remarkable ability to articulate a vision and bring people with him. Sam is an exceptional technical founder whose work already compares incredibly well against the best in the field.

“And Jimin has a rare gift for translating highly complex technology into something people can understand and get excited about. Together, those complementary strengths make them far more than the sum of their parts.”

This article was first published by Startup Daily.

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