Looq AI Launches AI-Enabled Digital Twin Platform at Distributech 2024; Secures $2.6M from Top VCs

Novel Technology Enables True Asset Intelligence of Critical Utilities Infrastructure at Scale

Looq AI Launches AI-Enabled Digital Twin Platform at Distributech 2024; Secures $2.6M from Top VCs

The utility sector faces unprecedented pressure to maintain, expand and improve the electric grid. Across inspection of existing assets, the development of new structures, and the repair of disaster struck areas, organizations have an urgent need for timely and accurate information to power key decision making and operations. These design, construction, and operation efforts constitute large and complex projects requiring careful multi-agency planning to ensure safe, timely, and budget friendly execution. A single mistake can lead to hazardous conditions and cost millions of dollars.

To resolve these challenges, organizations need intelligent, collaborative, and accurate digital twins; however, the broad adoption of digital twins and the ecosystem supporting them has been hampered by the high cost, and the time and resource burden needed to capture large-scale datasets on a time-frequency needed for effective decision making. “We have developed a fundamentally different way of creating these accurate digital twins leveraging cameras instead of lasers,” said Dominique Meyer, PhD., CEO at Looq AI. “Our cameras offer over 100x higher spatial sampling rates compared to top-of-the-line laser systems, enabling our customers to capture the data they need within minutes, and at a scale that they previously could not do.”

“The use of this technology is a game-changer for us. It gives us the opportunity to capture a large amount of survey-grade data without drones or hours and hours of boots-on-the-ground labor,” said Amanda Jones, PLS, Owner at AJS.

The Looq platform is a deep technology stack assembling an end-to-end solution for digitizing the built world. Looq’s proprietary “Q” camera system allows data to be captured in the field within minutes, which gets processed with Looq’s AI based image-to-model software in the cloud to create geo-referenced 3D digital twins and topographic maps with survey-grade accuracy and AI semantic information.

“I haven’t been this excited about a new 3D capture technology in a long time,” said Kevin Grover, Advanced Technology Leader, McElhanney Ltd. “The speed and quality of the survey data from Looq is paramount to other 3D technology on the market today. Looq is going to be disrupting the industry, and we are excited to be an early partner of theirs at McElhanney in Canada.”

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Using the Looq platform, project teams can now interact with the digital twin models and AI generated information to complete a multitude of engineering, surveying, analysis, and coordination tasks. This gives them bottom-line operational savings and importantly, makes it feasible to get access to the complete information needed for critical decision making.

“The Looq platform has become an indispensable engineering tool in our fielding tool kit. Their unique hardware and groundbreaking back-end processing has enabled our design teams to capture highly detailed and accurate field conditions in the absence of existing survey data,” said Blake Darling, PE, PMP, Director of Engineering Underground Programs, Aquawolf. “During all phases of design, the platform has enabled us to fill holes in our existing survey basemaps quickly and reliably with rich data which keeps design moving forward while we wait for traditional land survey. Looq has been a key component of helping Aquawolf maintain its reputation for agility and high-quality engineering and design in the underground utility industry.”

Fundraise

Looq AI has successfully secured $2.6M in a preferred series seed funding led by BootstrapLabs, a venture capital firm focused on applied artificial intelligence, and with the participation of Longley Capital and Spatial Capital. In conjunction with its initial pre-seed round, Looq AI has raised a total of $3.75M to date.

“We are grateful to be backed by some of the world’s most forward-looking investors in the applied AI space, exactly where Looq is focused,” said Meyer. “The addition of BootstrapLabs, Longley Capital and Spatial Capital, to our investor base will accelerate Looq AI to the next stage of growth.”

“Looq’s product is remarkable, as it not only combines the latest advances in hardware, AI, and computing technologies, but it also accelerates the very digitalization of our world, generating troves of unique data upon which the company will build its AI moat,” said Benjamin Levy, Co-Founder and General Partner of BootstrapLabs.

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