MISTT raises £5 million to build a space-and-time data layer for AI and autonomous systems

MISTT, a startup building a shared data layer for AI and autonomous systems, has raised £5 million, according to a post by investor Seedcamp. The company will start a pilot with the UK Ministry of Defence in December and plans to expand across NATO and into the US, using the money to grow its technical and business development teams.

Satellites, drones, radar, sonar and weather and ocean models each record position and time in different formats, and reconciling them is slow manual work, Seedcamp writes. MISTT divides the world into a single grid of three spatial dimensions plus time, from below the seabed to orbit, and gives every observation one address in space and time while keeping its uncertainty. "We don't build world models or autonomous systems," said chief executive and co-founder Dan Eaton, a former Royal Marines officer. "We are building the missing layer that provides them with accurate context of the world across space and time."

MISTT is starting with defence and says the same layer could later serve autonomous vessels and drones, shipping, insurance, climate data and AI world models.