GeoAI Festival Update: Cohort announced for the GeoAI Build and Pitch Programme
By 2030, the global value of EO data could exceed $700 billion while eliminating two gigatonnes of GHG emissions. The GeoAI Festival unites innovators, businesses, academics, end users, and public bodies to identify transformative opportunities for:
- Harnessing GeoAI for a Resilient and Sustainable Agri-Food System
- Next-Gen Spatial Planning: GeoAI Solutions for Land, Ocean, and Climate
- Unlocking Nature-Based Markets with EO & AI
As part of the GeoAI Festival, the unique GeoAI Festival Build and Pitch programme supports the rapid development of UK-based tools and services that utilise EO data through the introduction of innovative solutions within geospatial and AI ecosystems.
True resilience emerges when spatial intelligence meets scalable commercial models. That’s where societal benefit and revenue converge. And this is what we are doing at the GeoAI Festival, we’re reframing ‘Geo’ as the connective tissue between data and real- world impact, uniting thinkers and builders to create adaptive systems that learn, scale, and drive change where it matters most.
Luca Budello, Knowledge Transfer Manager – Geospatial Insights
Delivered by Innovate UK, this stage of the GeoAI Festival is run in partnership with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and with support from Satellite Applications Catapult (SAC), National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO), RAL Space, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Telespazio UK, Growth Studio, Cloudscaler and Strategic Blue.
This initiative is a brilliant example of how focused cross-sector collaboration can accelerate innovation. By bringing together EO and AI specialists alongside government, and researchers, we’re creating the conditions for novel, commercially viable products to emerge. I’m excited to see the creativity and innovation that will emerge.
Professor Anjali Goswami FRS, Chief Scientific Adviser and DG Science, Data and Analysis at Defra
In January 2026, the 20 successful teams will embark on an exciting programme of events, including a three-day in person sprint event and a six-week development period with workshops, during which they will continue to refine their concepts and prototypes while receiving expert mentorship.
Then, in March 2026, all members of the cohort will have the chance to showcase and pitch their new software solution at Space-Comm Expo Europe 2026, whilst five teams will be selected as winners of the unique GeoAI Festival Build and Pitch programme and receive tailored Commercialisation Credits for SAC’s Space Commercialisation Engine valued at up to £80,000.
Meet the GeoAI Festival Cohort
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Trust Habitat Condition Data with Explainable AI. Pemberton aims to enable insurers to accurately measure nature-related risk and support the growth of green finance.
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A GeoAI driven decision-making tool that aims to monitor and predict crop yields whilst mitigating climate risks and helping agri-stakeholders to make sustainable decisions.
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This team aims to help people and companies protect the planet, one square at a time, with a tool that integrates EO and public datasets to create low-cost analyses of nature projects.
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Remote Sensing Applications Consultants (RSAC) aims to expand its Land Cover® plus portfolio of time series satellite-derived agricultural products and enhance the functionality of Crop Map Explorer, a new platform for their analysis.
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This member of the cohort pioneers intelligent real-time systems that combine AI, hyperspectral imaging, remote sensing, simulation, and systems thinking to enable industries to adapt more quickly, operate efficiently, and unlock unprecedented value in complex environments.
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Offers a simple question-and-answer interface that aims to deliver timely, actionable insights that cut through the complexity of agrifood supply chains and make custom satellite data analysis available on the go, in the users’ language.
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VeLinkx combines AI-driven connectivity with Earth intelligence across terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks with the aim to build smarter, more resilient digital infrastructure.
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This team turns satellite, sensor and market data into climate-financial intelligence for capital markets. Through GeoAI, this team aims to refine its GeoAI engine, validate use cases and prepare for scale.
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Ergodic AI builds artificial intelligence world models to simulate networks, predict disruption, and recommend mitigation strategies with the aim to strengthen resilient agricultural planning and risk management.
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This member of the cohort develops GeoAI-driven tools to identify optimal urban sites for sustainable urban data centres. SpaceD aims to advance spatial-energy modelling and accelerate low-carbon, distributed digital infrastructure deployment.
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Calterra aims to help on-the-ground nature developers turn restoration projects into standardised and finance-ready assets with frontier geospatial AI technologies for project origination, monitoring and reporting.
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This team combines satellite EO, hyperspectral, and acoustic data with the aim to predict whale and marine ecosystem dynamics that would provide predictive insights that protect biodiversity, support fishers, and guide sustainable offshore wind and coastal planning.
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Gentian combine high-resolution imagery and AI to deliver precision monitoring of biodiversity and aims to develop an instant global habitat mapping tool for assessing site-specific nature risk & opportunity.
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This team tackles adaption to climate change head-on by pioneering a platform based on unmanned remote sensing and leveraging geospatial reasoning artificial intelligence with the aim to map, identify, and monitor pests and diseases in woodlands.
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An early-stage London-based startup that measures, analyses, and predicts the global ocean. The team uses environmental data and specialised geospatial artificial intelligence with the aim to aid offshore-energy, insurance, and policy stakeholders with actionable insights.
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This member of the cohort aims to provide verified environmental intelligence with on-farm digital twins to transform agricultural resilience and enhance sustainability across the agri-food sector.
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Aims to offer a geospatial intelligence platform that evaluates landscapes to identify high-potential sites for nature-based restoration.
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This team aims to support farmers to develop infrastructure and plans with visualisation and planning tools by expanding its 3D-Farm-Profiling-Platform using Digital-Elevation-Models (DEMs) to quickly add buildings, equipment and fields.
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Offers deliver actionable and predictive insights for farmers, agricultural supply chains and governments to optimise regenerative agriculture and improve climate risk strategies.
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Viable Site combines satellite imagery, AI, and government data to automate small housing sites’ feasibility assessment, enabling development viability analysis and affordable biodiversity monitoring that previously required multiple specialist consultants.
What’s next?
Whilst we look forward to seeing ideas take shape throughout the programme from the GeoAI Festival Cohort, we are pleased to invite you to register for our Explainable Earth Webinar Series that offer knowledge sharing on the following thought-provoking topics:
- 20 January – The Rise of Agentic GeoAI: Autonomy, Trust, and Collaboration
- 29 January – Seeing the Whole Picture: Multimodal AI for Understanding a Planet in Flux
- 12 February – Open by Design: How Systems Thinking Enables Resilient GeoAI
These webinars will be delivered in partnership with Lloyds Banking Group and the UK Open Multimodal AI Network.
We will also have exciting news soon about how you may get involved with the GeoAI Festival at Space-Comm Expo Europe 2026 in London. To find out more about the GeoAI Festival read the programme launch news item, subscribe to our e-newsletter and follow Innovate UK Business Connect on LinkedIn.