The U.S. Air Force has awarded a $49 million contract to WindBorne Systems, a company that uses autonomous weather balloons to collect atmospheric data. The deal is the largest the company has secured, and it could see its fleet of 700 balloons expand as they provide essential data to the military and other customers.

WindBorne’s co-founder and CTO, Andrey Sushko, explained that the contract will support the growth of their balloon constellation while also funding research and development. The company has been at the forefront of using AI to improve weather forecasting, with its latest model, WeatherMesh 6, reportedly more accurate than traditional models.

‘It’s one of the first times that a deep-learning model was used for actual operational decisions,’ Sushko noted. This highlights the growing role of AI in meteorology, a field where traditional methods have relied on expensive supercomputers and complex equations.

While AI-driven models are proving increasingly accurate, they still need to coexist with traditional methods. Google DeepMind’s latest weather model is among those that are becoming integral to the U.S. government’s hurricane response strategies.

WindBorne’s ability to navigate its balloons into the eye of a typhoon marks a novel step in the use of AI in weather data collection. The company’s use of wind and weather models to guide their balloons into strategic positions is a significant advancement in the field.