Every year, over $100B is spent on unnecessary excavation and drilling as part of underground discovery. The costs associated with drilling include searching for gas pipelines, water sources, and oil. The use of heavy equipment creates unnecessary and avoidable greenhouse gas emissions, wastes billions of dollars every year, and causes significant ecological damage.
Exodigo, a Proptech startup which has just emerged from stealth mode, envisions becoming the biggest company in the world for underground imaging and mapping. Their mission is to become the gold standard in industries where underground imaging is vital such as construction and infrastructure. They deploy multi-sensor technology and AI solutions to change the way we see the underground, and their approach is akin to combining an MRI, a CT scan and an Ultrasound, to produce one image which offers a clear view of the underground.
The underground exploration market
The market opportunity that Exodigo is looking to address can be divided up into three categories:
-Organizations today spend resources on tech (and staff) in order to map the underground. This includes geophysical firms, mapping companies, geologists, geophysicists, and the tech which supports these professional’s work. An estimated 30B a year is spent on tech and services in fields such as construction, infrastructure, and exploration.
-Related to construction, the second opportunity is the 50B of damages in construction that is spent yearly, as the tech and process are not effective.
-The third is the market for the drilling itself such as the drill or the tractor, and the costs of physically needing to dig. Close to 100B is spent on the tech, plus the resources for the digging itself. Even with that, this is only 30% effective as the current solutions are not good enough to accomplish the drilling goals.
Exodigo’s space for industry disruption
Exodigo’s founding team started with a powerful question: “what if you didn’t need to drill or dig to see what is underground?”
Currently there are no images one can trust to see clearly what is underground as the solutions today have not been effective. The challenges Exodigo is looking to solve include making an image good enough to understand what is underground so there is no need to drill.
Scaling and sharing the information of what is underground is currently not available as organizations don’t often share their findings. Exodigo could help solve this problem by offering to share these images digitally. And to date the diverse disciplines needed to do so, do not work together to map the underground; Exodigo brings together these talented professionals to work on the same team for the first time.
Exodigo’s solution is disruptive in that it is multi-sensing, and builds a picture using all the signals at once such as AI, signal processing, physics and software. Also, importantly this saves an average of 20% of costs and reduces drilling when conducting exploration, as surprises (costs) are minimized. From an ecological perspective projects become more effective and leave less of a carbon footprint.
The Exodigo solution
The Exodigo team has a decade of experience in signal processing and AI learned while serving in elite intelligence units in the IDF. Their solution delivers a clear digital map without the need for interpretation, as has been the case with outdated solutions. They are able to scan vast areas with high accuracy, using drones and ground platforms, all while producing a result they call “Smart Drilling”.
The ecological and manpower benefits Smart Drilling offers is that it minimizes unnecessary drilling and reduces damage made to the ground. It reduces the number of staff on-site and lowers the potential for accidents. And having less machines on-site lowers the overall carbon footprint per project.
Why we chose to invest in Exodigo
We chose to invest in Exodigo because of our trust in the team and the technology they developed. They have built and are delivering the gold standard in non-invasive, subsurface mapping technology. In recapping the opportunity that Exodigo’s solution offers:
-They promise to “democratize” subsurface mapping, and the ease of use their technology offers is welcomed by our team in that it will advance our project work with greater ease and by utilizing better information.
-The human factor is significant; complete and accurate data reduces the risk of unexpected injury. These accidents cause costly medical expenses for our employees and can even result in the loss of human life. These kinds of delays can also cause costs to run over and schedules to be disrupted.
-Their data is precise and will save time as well as reduce needless carbon emissions from using heavy equipment to drill.
We are excited to welcome the Exodigo team to ICT and to be partnering with a startup that is not only solving a major pain point in construction but has the scale to reduce the carbon footprint caused by underground exploration.
Maya Goren Bar, ICT General Manager
