Marinexplore Raises Seed Funding to Organize the Planet's Ocean Data

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Oct. 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Marinexplore, the world's first big data collaboration platform for searching, analyzing and collaborating with ocean data, today announced it has closed its seed funding round led by Intertrust Technologies Corporation. Other participants of this round include private investors from Silicon Valley, Singapore, Norway and Estonia, including Fredrik Astrup, offshore entrepreneur Lars Erik Baustad, Marek Kiisa (Astrec Invest, first investor of GrabCAD) and Ivar Siimar (WNB, investor in Defendec smart dust technology and other cleantech companies).

Founded in February 2012, the Silicon Valley startup has already aggregated and organized over 1.2 billion measurements from more than 24,000 ocean-borne devices globally organized into an easy-to-use user experience. Data are organized into computationally efficient storage, making it easy to explore, access and download ocean data from different devices and data sources; users can create custom datasets in minutes instead of days or weeks, eliminating today's expensive data processing cycle.

"Marinexplore will be the standard for analysis and collaboration for the world's ocean data, a digital "Hubble Telescope" into petabytes of marine information" said Talal Shamoon, CEO of Intertrust. "Marinexplore will assist in natural resource planning and education as the world's ocean environment encounters the historic challenges caused by population growth and climate change."

Sea the Difference

Founded by experienced Estonian technologists, the company addresses the two biggest issues around managing marine-related big data: how to access the vast amount of data that reside in isolated silos, segregated and disconnected from each other; and how to make the time-consuming handling and processing of all this data more efficient, which makes up more than 80% of the whole decision making process in ocean data management and communications market, estimated to be $4 billion.

"The number of ocean-borne probes is growing rapidly, cloud computing is disrupting the collaboration space, and today's users expect seamless software usability. Existing tools and processes used by the ocean community simply do not meet these demands. Our plan is to dramatically reduce data handling and processing time, reducing the risk and overhead associated with decision-making and collaboration. This would not only save millions, but more importantly, fundamentally change the way we plan and use ocean resources, thereby protecting the environment and ensuring the health of our oceans for generations to come" said Rainer Sternfeld, founder and CEO of Marinexplore.

Currently, Marinexplore uses public data from sources such as: NOAA stations, the intergovernmental Argo Program Deep Floats and GTS Buoys, as well as from Liquid Robotics wave gliders of the PacX experiment and Rutgers University gliders.

The Marinexplore Community

Building a community around data is as important as tools to handle it. As a service to the open data community, Marinexplore offers a free service for everyone around the planet working with public marine data.

"To date, there is no universal tool that organizes ocean data, and enables users to share public information securely across the globe. We want to empower these professionals with cutting-edge tools to focus on their real expertise, since the oceans affect everyone on Planet Earth", Sternfeld summarized.

Since its launch in July, Marinexplore has gathered more than 1,700 Alpha users, mainly professionals from the oceanographic and marine technology community, environment, and offshore industry. To use Marinexplore today, visit www.marinexplore.com to sign up for a free account.

About the Company

Marinexplore, Inc. is a startup founded in February 2012 by ex-ABB Business Development Manager Rainer Sternfeld, ex-Skype Research Lead André Karpištšenko, and Kalle Kägi. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA with a development team in Tallinn, Estonia.

SOURCE Marinexplore