LGND AI Raises $9M to Turn Earth Data Into AI-Friendly Intelligence
LGND AI just secured $9 million to change how Earth data is used in AI systems. The funding round was led by Javelin Venture Partners and backed by a slate of tech insiders, including Space Capital, Clocktower Ventures, and prominent angel investors like John Hanke, the creator of Keyhole, the tech behind Google Maps.
The company’s mission? Make Earth data easier for both people and machines to use. That includes satellite imagery, spatial datasets, and geographic analysis, which are typically locked behind high costs or complicated workflows. LGND’s tech strips away that friction.
“Our mission is to make Earth data universally accessible and actionable through AI,” said Nathaniel Manning, CEO and cofounder of LGND. “We’re making Earth understandable to people—and to AI.”
LGND isn’t trying to make better maps, it’s redefining what a map even is. The platform builds on what they call “geographic embeddings,” which essentially create dynamic, AI-ready representations of the planet. These can be queried, trained on, and deployed instantly. It's a sharp contrast to the current map tech that’s still stuck on static tiles and pixel-by-pixel analysis.
Co-founder Dan Hammer likened the shift to a foundational change in how geospatial data is handled. “We believe geographic embeddings are the new first-order data object for geospatial information, much like map tiles were two decades ago,” he said, pointing to LGND’s infrastructure as the layer that makes it all possible.
The company already has pilot projects underway, think wildfire risk models for insurers, detecting illegal mining, and plugging Earth data straight into AI agents. It’s not just for scientists either. LGND is rolling out no-code tools and APIs so teams across industries can integrate Earth data into their workflows without needing to write a single line of code.
As part of the expansion, Javelin’s Noah Doyle, a veteran in geospatial infrastructure and ex-Google Earth product lead, will join the LGND board.
This funding and product rollout come at a time when integrating real-time, spatial intelligence into AI is increasingly necessary for logistics, climate adaptation, and even finance. A relevant data point in this space: Earth observation startup funding rose 46% year-over-year in 2024, a clear sign that demand is building fast.
By making complex Earth systems usable and searchable, LGND is laying the groundwork for a new kind of intelligence layer—one that sees the world, quite literally, in smarter ways.
