Spoor was founded in 2021 with the goal of using computer vision to reduce the impact of wind turbines on local bird populations. Now, the startup has proven its technology works and is also seeing demand from wind farms and other sectors.
Spoor, based in Oslo, Norway, has built software that uses computer vision to track and identify bird populations and movement patterns. The software can detect birds within a radius of 2.5 kilometers (approximately 1.5 miles) and works with commercially available high-resolution cameras.
Wind farm operators can use this information to better plan wind farm locations and better navigate migration patterns. For example, in wind farms, turbines can slow down or shut down completely during periods of high regional movement.
Ask Helseth (pictured above left), co-founder and CEO of Spoor, told TechCrunch last year that he became interested in the field after learning that there was no effective way to track wind farms, despite many countries having strict rules on how wind farms should be operated due to where they are built and local bird populations.
“Expectations from regulators are increasing, but the industry lacks good tools,” Helseth said at the time. “Many people are out in the field with binoculars and trained dogs to see how many birds are hitting windmills.”
Helseth told TechCrunch last week that the company has since proven the need for the technology and worked to improve it.
At the time of seeding in 2024, Spool could track birds over a kilometer range, but that distance has since doubled. By collecting more data to feed into the AI model, the company was able to improve bird identification accuracy to about 96%.
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“Identifying the bird species for some of our clients adds another layer,” says Helseth. “Is it a bird or is it not a bird? We have an in-house ornithologist who helps us train new bird species and models to train new species. Expanding to other countries means we have rare species in our database.”
Mr. Spoor currently works with more than 20 of the world’s largest energy companies across three continents. Interest is also beginning to emerge from other industries, such as airports and fish farms. Spoor has a bat-tracking partnership with London-based mining giant Rio Tinto.
The company is also seeing interest in using its technology to track other objects of similar size, but Helseth said it is not considering pivoting to those areas yet.
“Of course, drones are plastic birds in our minds,” Helseth joked. “They move in different ways and have different shapes and sizes. Right now we’re discarding that data, but we’re interested in it.”
Spoor recently raised an €8 million ($9.3 million) Series A round led by SET Ventures, with participation from Ørstead Ventures and Superorganism, in addition to strategic investors.
Helseth predicts that interest in this type of technology will continue to grow as regulators continue to crack down on wind farms. For example, French regulators shut down a wind farm in April due to its impact on local bird populations and imposed hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.
“Our mission is to enable industry and nature to coexist,” Helseth said. “We are a small startup that has started on its journey, but still has a lot to prove. Over the next few years, we want to solidify our position in the wind industry and become a global leader in tackling these challenges. At the same time, we want to build some points that prove this technology has value beyond its core category.”
