Startup Tomorrow.io has built a constellation of weather satellites to feed data to its AI-powered forecasts customized for its business customers. Can it fill the gap left behind by DOGE’s cuts to the National Weather Service?
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2025/03/11/this-startup-cant-replace-the-national-weather-service-but-it-might-have-to/
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Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2025/03/11/this-startup-cant-replace-the-national-weather-service-but-it-might-have-to/
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NewsTranscript
00:00Today on Forbes, this startup can't replace the National Weather Service, but it might have to.
00:07For Shimon Elkabetz, the Department of Government Efficiency's rampage through the National Weather Service, or NWS, is a conundrum.
00:16On one hand, it represents an unprecedented opportunity for his AI-powered weather forecasting company, Tomorrow.io, if degraded service boosts demand for his own company's forecasts.
00:28On the other, replacing the NWS was never on his roadmap. It's not something the nine-year-old company, which provides customized weather forecasts for business customers, was designed to do.
00:40But that was before Elon Musk's Doge Minions orchestrated the firing of up to 20% of the staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, and proposed closing crucial facilities that produce weather forecasts.
00:55And while the Trump administration hasn't been clear about what its endgame is here, some speculate that it may be to privatize some of the government's weather forecasting services, as recommended by conservative policy blueprint Project 2025.
01:09Many of the key architects of Project 2025 have been appointed to major roles by President Trump.
01:15But if Doge's cuts prevent the NWS from providing reliable weather data, there may be no other choice.
01:22The sacking of more than 1,000 employees from NOAA in late February has already delayed the launch of weather balloons the NWS uses to produce reliable data, and The New York Times reported over the weekend that more cuts are on the horizon.
01:36Meanwhile, the General Services Administration is currently considering terminating the lease for a critical weather center in Maryland, where weather forecast operations have been consolidated and centralized for the whole country.
01:51During Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's February confirmation hearing before the Senate, he insisted that NOAA's spending could be easily cut without compromising weather forecasting, because he thinks it can be done more efficiently.
02:04While he didn't argue for full privatization, some climatologists fear the cuts are already degrading public weather forecasting, leaving gaps that the private sector is currently ill-equipped to fill.
02:16There simply isn't any private company that can provide weather data at the scale of NWS.
02:22Nearly all commercial weather companies, from Tomorrow to the weather app on your phone, rely on its data to power their forecasting models, even those that have their own sensors or satellites.
02:33That's in part because of the breadth of information it collects.
02:37NOAA uses satellites, weather balloons, ground radar systems, and more.
02:43Replicating that is capital-intensive, so private companies' hardware tends to be more focused on filling gaps or gathering hyperlocal data.
02:52Threats to the NOAA gold standard for weather data weren't something Elkabetz foresaw when he founded Tomorrow, then called ClimaCell, in 2016.
03:03Then, he said, his company was focused on this simple idea.
03:07As the climate crisis worsens, damages to businesses from increasingly extreme weather events are going to grow in frequency and intensity.
03:15Businesses needed a timely, reliable way to get weather information crucial to mitigating its potential negative effects.
03:22Existing services, which relied heavily on manual processes and suffered gaps in critical data, weren't going to cut it.
03:29Especially in areas that didn't have access to the kind of information that NOAA provides in the U.S.
03:35Tomorrow's solution was to create software that can not only provide forecasts, but also concrete suggestions for the steps a specific business should take to mitigate weather impacts.
03:46For example, it provides its airline customers like United and JetBlue with recommendations for grounding or rerouting flights during major storms.
03:55For pharmaceutical customers like Eli Lilly and Pfizer, it offers weather alerts to optimize transportation of temperature-sensitive raw materials and drugs.
04:04And for the Chicago Cubs, it provides information about weather conditions at Wrigley Field that can impact player performance,
04:11how the wind might affect how far a ball will travel, or how humidity could impact its speeds.
04:18Tomorrow's algorithms were initially similar to NOAA's, which rely on complex equations to simulate atmospheric behavior using the vast amounts of data it collects.
04:28More recently, the company has moved to generative AI models that can analyze both publicly available data from NWS and Tomorrow's own satellites to produce insights for its customers.
04:40For full coverage, check out Alex Knapp's piece on Forbes.com.
04:46This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.