Standing at the Gates of a Data Revolution — Atlas AI Raises Series A
By Victoria Coleman
One year ago, I made a wrenching decision. I decided to leave my place as the CTO of the Wikimedia Foundation, bid farewell to my beloved team, and leap forward into new, unchartered territory.
When you are the CTO of Wikipedia, everyone takes your calls. You are supporting the world’s 5th most visited website, one of the guiding pillars of the internet. So, you may wonder, what possessed me to step down from this pedestal and wave goodbye to my dear colleagues last February? I set out to lead a brilliant team at Atlas AI, a tiny startup the size of a mouse — but a mouse, as it turns out, with a lion’s roar.
Founded by three professors from Stanford and seed-funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, Atlas AI set off on a journey to empower local communities in Africa with a powerful product, proving that you can build a sustainable for-profit business while serving a higher purpose.
At Atlas AI, we measure the continent. We can look at any village or neighborhood in Africa and tell you about their spending power and explain their asset wealth. We can look at a smallholder field of maize in Kenya — a field as small as ten square meters — and tell you how much corn it has produced and even predict what the yield will be a month before a single cob of corn is picked.
The convergence of advanced machine learning, combined with the abundance of satellite imagery, and the availability of cheap compute have created a fundamental shift in our ability to generate accurate hyperlocal, timely datascapes. For the first time, this important data is being made available to decision-makers at senior levels of government, smallholder farmers, and others who can use datasets to make informed decisions. To put it simply, we are standing at the gates of a data revolution in Africa.
“We are standing at the gates of a data revolution in Africa.”
With less than a year’s runway, my first priority as the CEO was to raise capital for our Series A. Here we had an AI company with impeccable pedigree, a world class engineering team, killer technology, and a prestigious lead seed investor. We had significant revenue from reference customers, like the World Bank. We had key partnerships with the likes of AGRA — the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa. We were working with big consulting firms to solve pressing data problems for the Government of Kenya. We had DARPA funding.
Over the past six or so months, we pitched to dozens of VCs. Some of them conventional funds, some of them impact funds, some of them big and prominent, some of them small and boutique. They all loved our tech. Most loved the idea of using AI for a greater purpose.
But, Series A is a tough round to raise. With the product and the business model in development, there was a lot of uncertainty and, after all, investing is mostly an act of faith — faith in the technology, in the mission, the team, and the opportunity.
Despite the high praise, many expressed concern about a lack of information about the emerging markets. But, of course, we knew that — our mission as a company is to create precisely the kind of data that investors need in order to make informed decisions. Others were also concerned about us converting our service revenue into the all important ARR (annually recurring revenue)… But those doubts were absolved when I met Andy Byrnes in late spring of 2019.
Andy had just recently joined Micron Ventures to lead their $100M AI fund. Andy sounded like a ball of energy. A fast talker, excitable, and charismatic. The first time I met him, I was so nervous, I literally fell out of my chair as he bounced up the stairs in our quaint little office in Palo Alto. The day I met him, I knew that we would raise. Andy was different. He believed in us. He believed in our tech, in our potential, and our team.
“He believed in us. He believed in our tech, in our potential, and our team.”
A few weeks later, we met with Thomas D’Halluin and his team at Airbus Ventures on Sand Hill Road. Thomas had built a different kind of VC team. A team of technology experts and business people, but also a team of dreamers and mentors. Thomas and his team had turned down many opportunities to invest in geospatial analytics companies. But, Thomas also believed in us. He and his team believed that we’d create a new product category. He knew that we would make a difference. Fast forward a few months, and we closed our Series A with Airbus Ventures as our lead investor, with Micron and The Rockefeller Foundation, our rock through the inception of the company, also participating in the round.
Rockefeller has been the dream investor for Atlas. Not only did they breathe life into our company from the start, but Raj Shah’s vision on catalytic capital is creating revolutionary impact investment instruments. Zia Khan and his innovation team were our lifeline as we stood up the company. If Zia calls you, my advice is pick up the phone.
We now stand at the beginning of the next phase of Atlas AI (and yes, we are hiring) with our new investor team by our side. As I look back on this past year, it has been a year of discovery, a year of building, and a year of learning.
Last February, with the whole of two days as the CEO under my belt, I met Joe Mucheru, Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Information, Communications and Technology in Nairobi to introduce him to Atlas AI. It was a moment of sheer terror — and on that occasion I at least managed to stay on my chair. One year later, CS Mucheru paid us a return visit in Palo Alto and saw first-hand the clarity and power that our data products can afford government decision-makers as they strive to fulfill the potential of their incredible people. We are now planning our return visit to Nairobi to start putting our technology to work. It will be exhilarating, and it will be thrilling — and most of all transformational for those we serve.
