Geopipe

Geopipe is a technology company that uses artificial intelligence to create detailed, interactive 3D models of real-world locations. Founded in 2016 by CEO Dr. Christopher Mitchell and CSO Dr. Thomas Dickerson, the company aims to build an authoritative “whole-Earth digital twin.” The founders, who have known each other for over 16 years, were inspired by personal projects during their respective computer science Ph.D.s to place real-world environments into video games. Mitchell, who earned his Ph.D. from NYU, and Dickerson, who received his from Brown University, leveraged their expertise in distributed systems and algorithmic problems to launch the company.

The company's core product is a platform that ingests various sensor data, including satellite photos, LiDAR scans, and maps, and uses a proprietary machine learning pipeline to reconstruct rich, semantically-aware digital twins of cities. This process, which can reconstruct entire cities in hours, produces models that understand what objects are, not just how they look, enabling a wide range of interactive simulations. The technology is designed to save significant time and resources compared to traditional 3D modeling, which can take weeks or months. Geopipe’s models can be streamed directly into applications or downloaded in various formats compatible with game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine.

Geopipe operates on a subscription-based business model, licensing its data to customers on a monthly or annual basis, with commercial use plans starting from around $100 per month. The company targets a diverse client base across gaming, simulation, architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC), urban planning, and first responder training. It operates in the 3D mapping and modeling market, which was valued at $17 billion in 2020 within the larger $100 billion geospatial data industry. In September 2021, Geopipe closed a $2.4 million seed funding round led by Village Global, with participation from Matrix Partners, the Alexa Fund, and AME Cloud Ventures, bringing its total equity funding to over $2.5 million.

Keywords: digital twin, 3D modeling, artificial intelligence, machine learning, geospatial data, simulation environments, virtual reality, urban planning, AEC, game development, real-world data, 3D mapping, computer vision, data visualization, Unity integration, Unreal Engine, smart cities, metaverse, LiDAR data, procedural generation