Maxar will acquire Wovenware, an artificial Intelligence and Software firm based in Puerto Rico.
WASHINGTON — Maxar Technologies last week announced a new acquisition that furthers the company’s goal of turning its satellite imagery archive into 3D products for gaming, media and other industries.
The company plans to acquire Wovenware (an artificial intelligence and software company based in Puerto Rico). Daniel Jablonsky, Maxar’s president and CEO, said Nov. 3 that Wovenware was acquired for its expertise in 3D geospatial technology and machine learning. “We’re bringing their 150 software engineers and developers to the Maxar team,” Jablonsky said during a third-quarter earnings call.
Wovenware is the latest addition to Maxar’s 3D tech business following the 2020 acquisition of Vricon Strategic investments earlier in the year Blackshark.ai.
Maxar executives spoke to analysts about their plans to bring new business into the video gaming, entertainment, and metaverse industries. The company’s high-resolution satellite imagery archives, daily image collection and 3D production capabilities are well-positioned to serve these markets.
Jablonsky said acquisitions of tech companies like Wovenware are needed investments in order to generate new sources of revenue from the company’s current and future imaging satellites. The new Worldview Legion imaging constellation is critical to Maxar’s lucrative U.S. government business but the company also is looking for commercial markets. Jablonsky announced that the launch of the first two satellites, along with four others, will take place in January after multiple delays due to production and testing problems.
Dan Nord is a former executive at Amazon and Electronic Arts. He joined Maxar last January as senior vice-president of enterprise business.
He noted that Maxar’s 3D digital twin of the Earth has been used to develop highly accurate immersive Training environments For the U.S. Army, maps for autonomous vehicle navigation are next targets. Gaming and entertainment are the next markets.
Maxar and Blackshark.ai teamed up to present a digital-twin product last month at Unreal Fest, hosted by Epic Games. Epic Games is a well-known game engine maker. “We presented our capability to thousands of developers and released a demo of a digital twin of New Orleans where the conference was being held,” said Nord. Maxar hopes to make Maxar’s 3D digital twin available to developers so they can use it for their games or applications.
Film producers, he said, could use Maxar’s 3D globe in a game engine and theoretically film anywhere, said Nord. “We said Blackshark would help us enter the gaming market and now it has.”
