Digital twin startup Terria raises $3 million Seed round in spinout from CSIRO

Geospatial tech startup Terria has spun out of science agency CSIRO, after raising $3 million in a Seed round backed by deep tech VC Main Sequence.

Terria organises and visualises spatial data in digital twin formats to make data accessible

It simplifies the complex process of creating digital twins, and online virtual replicas of buildings, cities, regions and countries for modelling and investigation of ‘what-if’ scenarios for planning and managing the cities of the future, the energy transition and environmental monitoring.

The Seed funding will support Terria’s global ambitions.

A Terria digital twin of Melbourne buildings. Image: Terria

Two former CSIRO employees will lead Terria: the startup’s new CEO and product lead, Ana Belgun, and Amber Standley as chief experience officer.

Belgun said Terria began in 2014, when the first open-data, open-source Australian government platforms were created to access and visualise spatial data.

“Since then, millions of users have accessed over 15,000 datasets on Terria mapping platforms,” she said

“In this next phase we will scale the positive impact we have created so far for Australian companies and government agencies and take these advanced tools global to enable the creation and management of digital twins across different domains.

“With a predicted $50 billion growth in the geospatial data market in the next three years alone, Terria can help organisations to consolidate, access and use spatial data more effectively.”

Main Sequence partner Mike Nicholls said Terria solves a major mapping and data problem in the built and natural environment: how to catalogue, visualise and analyse all the natural and built data in a given location.

“We first saw Terria a few years ago in the CSIRO Data61 lab and loved the products and how they were being adopted by users,” he said.

“A typical city street has thousands of data sets and plans for buildings, streets, footpaths, electricity, water, sewage, telecommunications, parks, stations, transport, planning and the natural environment.

“Terria can bring all that data together integrating 80 different formats and visualise this on one map. We are excited to help spin this company out and look forward to them growing a huge customer base over the coming years.”