Since I left Google X I've been exploring Oceans + Biodiversity + AI space building my own startup wildflow.ai (foundation models for coral reefs and beyond). It's been an incredible journey. Finally my path has crystalised. Now I know where I'm going, and most importantly how (this post).
I'll start with why. Life on Earth has been evolving for billions of years. Amazon rainforest, coral reefs and other ecosystems are incredibly complex. But it's not just random things, it's a beautiful complexity. They are inconceivably rich! Unfortunately, we don't really know how ecosystems work. The ocean is still like a black box. Poor understanding leads to poor decisions that eventually harm nature. Sadly, we already lost 69% of living things on the planet in the past 50 years. The good news, we now have enough knowledge and tools. For the first time, we could become the generation that actually leaves behind nature better than we found it.
Wildflow is on a quest to comprehensively understand nature and empower humans to make better decisions on protecting our ecosystems, starting with coral reefs. We’re building multimodal foundation models for biodiversity, a “brain” of the digital nervous system for our planet. This system deeply understands complex ecosystem dynamics and guides human activities, enabling billions to flood into conservation/restoration and more. Most importantly it brings balance between humans and nature. And in the future it gives us superpowers to make a jungle out of a desert and even terraform Mars. Please see the company vision (long-awaited one-pager) below.
Context
Natural ecosystem services provide benefits of $125-140T per year, surpassing the entire global GDP. To survive as a species, we must protect our ecosystems. Despite losing 69% of living things on the planet over the past 50 years and other tremendous destruction that’s happening, we now have a unique opportunity. We have the knowledge and tools to not only protect what remains but to actively restore and even enhance our planet's biodiversity. For the first time, we could become the generation that actually leaves behind nature better than we found it.
Problem
Natural ecosystems are incredibly complex. Did you know wolves make rivers? We don’t really understand how ecosystems work. Especially the ocean – it’s like a black box – we still know less about the ocean than about outer space. We need to protect our ocean, and we don’t have much time for it. We need to deploy more solutions faster. A lot of amazing people genuinely want and are trying to help the ocean! Unfortunately, often, poor understanding leads to poor decisions that eventually harm nature. Luckily, we now have a ton of data to understand oceans better. In 2018 alone, we had more ocean data than in the entire 20th century (Nature). It’s growing rapidly and will continue growing with the development of robotics, new sensing solutions, and data collection companies. So the big challenge is how do we process this insane “tsunami” of data, comprehensively understand how natural ecosystems function, and empower humans to make better decisions on protecting our ecosystems? This time, we need to act fast and have no room for error.
Solution
The good news is that AI can help. It’s great at analysing massive amounts of data and helping make quality decisions. Its capabilities are growing. People are working on foundation models for robots, geospatial data, chemistry, physics, and more. These are large-scale AI models trained on massive amounts of data and adapted to perform various tasks. We need foundation models for biodiversity to model natural ecosystems, especially the ocean.
Wildflow
Wildflow was founded to comprehensively understand nature and empower humans to make better decisions about protecting our ecosystems. Wildflow (wildlife + dataflow) is a planetary digital nervous system that connects all sensors measuring the biosphere, such as eDNA, underwater cameras, bioacoustic microphones, remote sensing, etc., to real-world actions like restoring coral reefs, creating marine protected areas, preventing algal blooms, managing invasive species, etc. We’re building multimodal foundation models for biodiversity, trained on the insane amounts of raw sensor data from the ground up, and comprehensively understanding how ecosystems function. All intricate ecosystem dynamics, such as population dynamics, predator-prey dynamics, phenological events (like coral spawning), etc. How agricultural runoff, overfishing, and other human activities impact ecosystems. How ecosystems affect humans through ecosystem services, like oxygen production, water purification, coastal protection, tourism and more. It’s the ultimate digital twin of nature, allowing people to simulate different “what-if'' scenarios and see how our decisions impact ecosystems. It deeply understands nature and guides human activities.
First product
Billions of years of evolution created Earth's vibrant ecosystems – they are inconceivably rich! We have so much to learn from this beautiful complexity. We want to build a future where humans and nature thrive and enrich each other. That’s why we chose to start with coral reefs. They are the most complex, beautiful, endangered, and important ecosystem. They are home to 25% of marine life while occupying only 0.1% of the ocean. Sadly, we’re on track to lose 90% of coral reefs by 2050. The time to act is now. Over half a billion people rely on coral reefs. Already vulnerable communities are the first to suffer the consequences. We have to make a lot of critical decisions about them!
Wildflow Coral is our first product. We take all the data across all modalities, such as 3D photogrammetry, bioacoustics, underwater videos, remote sensing, eDNA, environmental data like currents, and more, to create the ultimate digital twin of any coral reef ecosystem and make it available to the world. And we do it at a planetary scale.
This enables deep modelling of complex ecosystem dynamics, such as population dynamics, predator-prey dynamics, energy transfer, and phenological events (like spawning), and computes the ecosystem's health and resilience metrics. Via rigorous analysis of multimodal data, it uncovers precise mechanisms driving ecosystem change, offering humans irrefutable evidence to steer their actions. It shows quantitatively how coastal development, agriculture runoff, invasive species, pollution, increasing water temperatures, and other pressures affect the coral reef ecosystem. It shows what the coral reef ecosystem gives us back through its services, such as coastal area protection and oxygen production. It coordinates conservation and restoration efforts worldwide. We know which practises work and which don’t. It guides human activities to understand, protect and restore coral reef ecosystems.
Market
Billions of people and dollars depend on our ability to protect and restore coral reef ecosystems. At the forefront of this battle are:
- Environmental NGOs and conservation/restoration organisations who need to monitor reef health holistically, optimise conservation/restoration practices, prove ROI to donors, and maximise the impact of their work.
- Philanthropic organisations and foundations (and others who fund conservation and restoration) need to identify high-impact projects and allocate resources more effectively using data-driven insights from the digital twin. Without the ability to understand coral ecosystems, we can't truly unlock projects, so billions are waiting or, in fact, wasted.
- Coastal communities and local governments need to protect their livelihoods.
- Governments and policymakers need to develop and roll out effective, precise environmental policies to protect nature (similar to biodiversity net gain, SBTN, TNFD, etc).
- Research institutions need to accelerate scientific discovery by harnessing the power of AI-driven analysis of massive datasets.
- Insurance companies need to gain precise risk assessment tools for coastal properties and marine assets.
- Coastal tourism boards need to protect their most valuable natural asset, ensuring the long-term health of their economies.
- Citizen scientists and diving enthusiasts are looking for a way to contribute meaningfully to reef protection, enriching the global model with their observations.
Here's a simple example: a new hotel is being developed, which causes more nutrients to end up in the water, leading to an algal bloom. Larvae of the crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) love eating algae, so their population skyrockets, damaging local coral reefs. The local economy plummets. The newly built hotel can’t attract tourists any more. Fisheries cannot catch fish because there are no fish anymore. Coastal communities face a cascade of challenges, from economic instability to food insecurity and increased vulnerability to natural disasters.
Billions of people and dollars depend on our ability to understand and make decisions about protecting and interacting with coral reef ecosystems. Wildflow Coral unlocks a new era of data-driven conservation on a global scale.
Roadmap
Wave 0: NOW
We got a few terabytes of coral reef 3D photogrammetry data from 4 universities and the world’s largest reef restoration effort. Established connections with major research institutions, 3D data pipeline organisations, data collecting companies, restoration projects and reef analytics research groups.
Wave 1: 3D in 6 months
Rapidly launch open 3D reef data platform, hosting existing high-resolution photogrammetry datasets from top research labs. Simultaneously, develop tools for visualising and labelling these massive 3D models (over 100GBs each) in the browser. Develop an open API to run analytics pipelines against all our data, allowing researchers from all over the world to collaborate on these models. This establishes Wildflow as the go-to hub for reef data and generates immediate interest. Conduct a survey (a public catalogue) to locate existing coral reef datasets to integrate (for other modalities). Secure an initial paying client, showcasing the platform's value in monitoring restoration efforts.
Wave 2: MULTIMODAL in 1 year
Expand the data platform to integrate multimodal data sources like acoustics, videos, eDNA, satellite imagery, and environmental data. Develop AI models that understand and integrate all multimodal data inputs alongside the existing 3D data. Classify species, assess benthic cover, and estimate reef health using mechanistic models (e.g. for biodiversity credits). Start training the first multimodal foundation models for biodiversity (two modalities first). Target conservation and restoration projects as early clients. Partner with dive centres for citizen science data collection (starting with 3D models), further enriching the platform.
Wave 3: TWIN in 2 years
Develop comprehensive digital twins of coral reefs, modelling ecosystem dynamics (connectivity, predator-prey, phenological events, etc), human impacts (management of invasive species like COTS or lionfish, stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) propagation, etc.), and valuating ecosystem services. This digital twin enables "what-if" scenario modelling and guides targeted interventions. Expand to other markets beyond conservation/restoration projects. Many people have started building their own applications on top of Wildflow Coral. Coral reefs around the world are starting to revive!
Wave 4: BEYOND in 4 years
Expand our tech to other ocean ecosystems like oyster reefs and seagrass meadows. Wildflow Coral’s modular architecture, along with its proven AI capabilities and insights into critical marine habitats, further refine our ability to model complex interactions within the ocean's interconnected web of life.
In the next waves we comprehensively understand all natural ecosystems and gain the ability to create a truly functioning jungle out of any desert and even terraform Mars!
See a more detailed roadmap here: wildflow.ai/roadmap
The Ask
Now looking for $1M non-dilutive funding to assemble a world-class team of 2-3 AI and marine biology experts, accelerate our roadmap to Wave 2, and demonstrate commercial viability by delivering AI-powered, multimodal reef intelligence to paying clients within 12 months. Join us on the quest to model ocean ecosystems and help humanity restore and protect nature!
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