The WindBorne Air Force contract is a new agreement that could be worth nearly $50 million to the weather balloon startup. Under the deal, the U.S. Air Force will buy atmospheric data collected by WindBorne Systems’ fleet of autonomous weather balloons.
WindBorne currently has about 700 weather balloons flying around the globe. These balloons collect atmospheric sensor readings that the company sells to customers and also feeds into its own AI weather forecasting model. WindBorne, founded in 2015 and based in Redwood City, California, is one of the first organizations to directly feed empirical data into a deep-learning weather model.
The company has worked closely with the U.S. government, particularly the National Weather Service and the U.S. Air Force and Navy. However, this is the single-largest contract the company has participated in.
How the WindBorne Air Force Contract Works
The contract is worth up to $49 million, but the Air Force pays only as it needs data. It can place orders for specific regions at specific times. So far, it has ordered $1.7 million worth, and executives expect more orders to follow.
“This is largely a vehicle through which continued growth of the constellation can be supported, as well as some work on research and development to continue to improve the hardware and performance of the balloons,” WindBorne co-founder and CTO Andrey Sushko said.
He added that the contract, which was awarded without competitive bidding, is “a determination by the government that for this capability of collecting global data, we were the only company able to provide it in the way that met their needs for these operations.”
WindBorne’s Growth and Funding
WindBorne CEO John Dean said in August that the company had raised a $37 million Series B round to continue scaling its business. Earlier this summer, the company released the latest version of its forecasting model, WeatherMesh 6.
WindBorne says WeatherMesh 6 provides more accurate forecasts than the traditional model run by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which simulates the atmosphere using the laws of physics.
Since the arrival of transformer model architectures and the ECMWF’s release of a massive weather dataset a few years ago, AI weather forecasting has become one of the more productive uses of deep-learning technology. Meteorologists previously relied on expensive supercomputers running detailed equations that approximate how the atmosphere behaves. Now, end-to-end learning can ingest decades of weather data and issue predictions more quickly.
Why AI Weather Forecasting Is Advancing
Models built by frontier labs and government agencies are proving more accurate than traditional forecasts, although it is still a jagged frontier. Both types of forecasts are required to enable useful understanding of the weather.
Google DeepMind’s latest weather model offers important new capabilities, and its cyclone forecasting tools are becoming increasingly central to how the U.S. government responds to hurricane season.
A Historic Typhoon Flight
In August, WindBorne became the first organization to send an unpowered flight system — one with no engine — to collect data in the eye of a typhoon. The company maneuvers its balloons by adjusting their altitude, bleeding air, or dropping sand carried as ballast, to send the vehicles into winds that take them where they need to go.
“That’s a pretty novel step, and the two ingredients for that are one, having good wind and weather models, and knowing how to navigate them; and two, having a large enough constellation that you have balloons in the right places,” Sushko said.
“It’s one of the first times that a deep-learning model was used for actual operational decisions.”
What This Means for Government Weather Data
The WindBorne Air Force contract represents a major step for private AI-driven weather data in government operations. It gives the Air Force flexible access to global atmospheric readings while allowing WindBorne to expand its balloon constellation and continue hardware research and development.
With $1.7 million already ordered and more expected, the partnership shows how the military is turning to commercial innovation for real-time weather intelligence. For WindBorne, the deal supports continued growth of its constellation and ongoing work to improve the performance of its balloons.
The contract also reinforces the role of AI models in modern forecasting. By combining empirical balloon data with deep-learning systems, WindBorne is helping shift how weather data is collected, analyzed, and used for critical decisions.
