Jupiter in the news

Rich Sorkin is the founder and CEO of Jupiter Intelligence, a startup delivering hyperlocal climate predictions using cloud computing.

Jupiter is a company staffed in part by climatologists and other scientists and provides climate change risk assessments for projects and government agencies.

“It joins the mounting evidence about the scope and magnitude of climate-change impacts,” says Jupiter Intelligence director Julie Pullen, an ocean scientist at Jupiter Intelligence who reviewed an earlier version of the report. And because the report drills down into the local-scale impacts, Pullen adds, it gives Americans a realistic view of exactly how climate change influences their day-to-day experiences.

Richard Sorkin, co-founder of Jupiter Intel, said politics and other factors can keep government-provided maps from being the most comprehensive flood maps available. Jupiter works to create flood maps using the latest in cloud-computing technology to account for all factors that lead to flooding. The company has a team of experts, including a Nobel Prize winner, that works with governments and companies to provide the most up-to-date information on property risks.

Today we are pleased to announce our partnership with Brooklyn College and an extended team of academic and private institutions to study urban flooding in New York City and measures to improve resilience. Jupiter is leading the scientific modeling, essential to comprehending current and future rain and flood scenarios. The team has already completed its first milestone, a proof of concept, and is actively using Jupiter’s scientific models on our ClimateScore™ cloud computing platform.

“We live in a world designed for an environment that no longer exists,” says Rich Sorkin, the co-founder of Jupiter Intelligence, a company that models climate-induced risk. Accepting the reality of what future will look like, he says, is key to planning for it—and studies like this, he says, highlight just how quickly we’ll all have to adapt.

Jupiter Intel’s models, satellite data and sensors help community planners, developers and city officials anticipate challenges such as sea level rise, erosion and impermeable pavement. The company, which has raised $10 million in venture capital funding so far, can predict flood risks down to specific properties, for the near future and years out.

It is what could be defined as the “resilience issue”, the understanding and predicting of the risks related to climate change and their impacts on the horizon of the public and private sector. Jupiter is a startup, which offers services, predictions, and analyses to city officials, insurance companies, businesses, and any other actor in the public arena who deals with urban planning in coastal areas.

Doug Parsons of America Adapts talks with Rich Sorkin, CEO and Co-Founder of Jupiter Intel, about the company’s history and Rich’s short- and long-term goals in this emerging field. Doug and Rich discuss developing businesses in the adaptation sector and how businesses can use smart climate planning to avoid a repeat of the 2008 financial meltdown.

The Series C Financing is co-led by Clearvision Ventures and MPower Partners. Jupiter now provides analytics to 30 companies in the Global 2000, U.S. Department of Defense and FEMA to understand the impact of climate change on their physical infrastructure and supply chains, risks to financial portfolios, and vulnerabilities to human health and safety, and to protect over ten billion dollars of physical assets and more than a trillion dollars of financial assets.

Jupiter will join insurance and utility industry leaders along with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and others in a program at San Jose State University’s Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center (WIRC).

Jupiter announced a major expansion of its work in Japan—adding an industry leading Japan-based venture investor MPower Partners. MPower is Japan’s first ESG-focused global venture capital firm and the first female-led VC firm in Japan.

The Columbia Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Applied Physics, and Applied Mathematics, author, and podcast host further strengthens Jupiter’s unmatched scientific expertise. “We are excited that Adam will bring his knowledge and enthusiasm to continue our efforts at providing the economy with the best science possible,” said Josh Hacker, Jupiter’s Chief Scientist and Co-founder.

Leavitt is a legal pioneer on emerging standards of care in the construction and engineering design resiliency of structures that are threatened by extreme weather from climate change as well as the legal ramifications of failing to adapt to climate change.

In collaboration with MS&AD InterRisk Research & Consulting, the goal of the enhancement is to resolve the lack of scientific data and completeness in terms of subject regions, and other issues regarding climate change scenario analysis.

The alliance combines Guidehouse’s utility industry expertise with Jupiter’s global-scale analytics platform to provide clients with a comprehensive and transparent climate change risk assessment as a key part of an advanced integrated planning strategy.

As the Biden-Harris administration renews its commitment to addressing climate change, Jupiter also announced its support for greater federal coordination of climate information services, emphasizing the need for better governance and the formation of a new Federal Climate Service (FCS). Jupiter’s public sector work has accelerated under the new administration, with risk planning and resilience projects underway or complete with the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and multiple other entities within the Executive Branch as well as grant funded work with the National Science Foundation and NASA.

Despite the impact of the global pandemic, Jupiter added several new marquee customers in the past year and looks forward to the Biden Administration’s investments and policies in science, greenhouse gas reduction, and resilience.