PangeAI emerges from stealth to democratize access to geospatial data

SAN FRANCISCO, BERLIN, PRAGUE, Dec. 15, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- A startup founded by Johanna von der Leyen and Marek Miltner at Stanford is changing the way companies and public institutions work with geospatial data. Instead of needing to hire a team of GIS experts, PangeAI agents allow making complex analyses and decisions involving physical infrastructure as easy as typing a prompt. The goal is to make the physical world as searchable and understandable as the digital one.

Founding a geospatial revolution

"Today, the data explaining our physical world is locked behind complex geospatial tools that only specialists can use. Think where we build, where we can restore nature, where climate risks will hit - all of this can only be analyzed by expert teams dedicating weeks at a time to each project. Marek and I experienced that first hand throughout our work in consulting, industry, and academia," explains Johanna von der Leyen, co-founder and CEO of PangeAI.

Before founding PangeAI, Johanna von der Leyen worked on addressing environmental and climate issues from a business and policy perspective. She spent six years at Stanford and McKinsey researching and working with clients whose decision-making critically depended on geospatial data from infrastructure and energy to climate risk.

"Geospatial intelligence has been stuck in consultant mode for decades, with GIS software in 2025 looking like software for Windows 95" says CTO Marek Miltner. "We built PangeAI so every organization can run advanced spatial reasoning - instantly, autonomously, and at massive scale."

Marek Miltner has more than eight years of experience building AI-first products and two successful startup exits. At Stanford, he focused on research at the intersection of AI and sustainable energy, using geospatial data to optimize energy load forecasting models.

The pair share academic history at Cambridge and Stanford, each bringing to the table a unique set of skills focused on management and technology, respectively.

A digital GIS expert

Currently, organizations which need to make decisions based on geospatial data are dependent on hiring GIS experts who search for and assemble relevant data sets from multiple sources, combine them with the client's internal data, design and run complex analyses and prepare reports for management. Every step is time-consuming, expensive, and requires highly specialized expertise.

PangeAI turns this process into an AI-driven workflow. Its system of AI agents can automatically identify and ingest the relevant geospatial data, select the optimal analytical procedures based on the type of question, run simulations and generate maps, overviews, and reports. All in response to a natural-language query that any business analyst or manager can write.

Energy, insurance, and natural capital

PangeAI is targeting today's geospatial intelligence market, worth around $100 billion, where expert-driven, manually prepared projects still dominate. The startup is initially focusing on verticals where geospatial data is business-critical and yet particularly hard to work with:

• Energy – Agents selecting suitable sites for renewables, monitoring risks along transmission corridors, and planning infrastructure.
• Insurance – Next-generation hazard scoring for flood, wildfire, wind, and earthquakes, down to the individual property level, in minutes.
• Natural capital – Agents that detect land-use change, forest degradation, and nature-based solution opportunities for global asset managers.

Even before the full market launch, the team is working with selected pilot partners. Already now, a few months after founding, one of the largest Japanese insurance groups is testing PangeAI to improve natural hazard risk scoring for properties. A leading global natural-capital investor is working with PangeAI to evaluate where nature-based solutions can deliver the most significant ecological and financial impact in South America. And applications in energy include monitoring environmental risks along thousands of kilometers of infrastructure across Europe and the US.

Initial transatlantic backing

Starting off based on grants from Stanford University, PangeAI has already attracted financial backing both in the US and Europe. In the US, led by Plug and Play and Vocal Ventures in Silicon Valley joined by NYC based RTP Global and in Europe the firm secured investment from Miton, joined by Tensor Ventures along with Spinoffy in Prague, supported by a network of strategic angel investors across climate, AI, and geospatial intelligence.

"Making the growing volume of geospatial data instantly accessible deeply resonated with us, and the unique mix of expertise within the team made us interested in investing from our very first conversation. We are also proud to support a team with European roots that is redefining an entire category." adds Tomáš Matějček, partner at Miton responsible for other breakaway successes like Rohlik. "PangeAI is delivering a paradigm shift in climate action. The platform democratizes spatial intelligence by turning the world's most complex geospatial data into decision-ready answers in minutes, not months. This is a crucial, AI-powered layer for the new sustainable economy, enabling our portfolio to make faster, smarter, and more impactful climate decisions globally," adds Reza Khaj, Director of Energy at Plug and Play.

PangeAI is part of a global wave of companies building vertical agentic systems that go far beyond chatbots. But in geospatial - one of the world's largest and most under-digitized data categories - the company is among the first.

"By bringing frontier AI reasoning into the physical world, we unlock faster decisions, safer infrastructure, and more sustainable investments," says Johanna von der Leyen. "This is not just a new tool. It's a new way of working with the planet."

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SOURCE PangeAI Inc.