While growing up in Normandy, northern France, Yanis Souami became enamoured with the ocean. One of his earliest memories was “going to the sea, snorkelling and marvelling at the fish and the wildlife”, he says.
The information enables electric utilities to cut the offending greenery back before it causes power outages or wildfires. When it was founded, in 2018, Overstory’s aim was to use machine learning to detect deforestation. But, after two years, it decided to focus on serving utilities, which already spent heavily on vegetation monitoring. “We give them a network-wide view of risks caused by vegetation,” says chief executive Fiona Spruill. “Companies never had this technology.