Cape Analytics raises $44M to automate property inspections with AI

Cape Analytics, a company meshing AI with aerial imagery to power property insurance inspections, has raised $44 million in a series C round of funding.

Founded in 2014, Mountain View, California-based Cape Analytics enables insurance providers such as AXA and Western Mutual to optimize their underwriting process by leveraging computer vision and geospatial imagery to evaluate properties without having to send someone out to physically inspect them.

Manual inspections can be a hazardous and resource-intensive process, often involving climbing onto roofs. Instead, Cape Analytics garners high-resolution aerial photos from third parties like Nearmap and then analyzes and extracts structured data from the imagery. Data might include the size of the property, the roof’s condition, what it’s made of, whether there are solar panels, or even whether any trees overhang the building.

Collectively, this data helps insurers not only establish the current condition of the property, but predict future damage. And by comparing previous imagery, Cape Analytics can also determine whether any changes have been made to a property since the last valuation.

Above: Cape Analytics example

Data sources

Cape Analytics had raised $31 million over a couple of rounds of funding in the past seven years, and the company is now well-financed to expand on its existing 50 subscription-based customers from across the insurance and real estate spheres.

However, as with just about every AI-powered technology, data is what makes things tick — which is why Cape Analytics said it’s now looking to “diversify its suite of data sources and partnerships.” The company currently blends sources spanning imagery providers, property parcel information, public records, hazard data, and more to power the platform’s algorithmic prediction smarts.

“The idea [with this funding] is to add, blend, and compare additional high-quality sources while also exploring new forms of data — for example, weather data or home sales information, and much more,” a company spokesperson told VentureBeat.

The company’s series C round was led by Pivot Investment Partners, with participation from a slew of parties, including funds related to insurance carriers such as State Farm Ventures, The Hartford, and the Cincinnati Insurance Company.