This AI startup moved to Wilmington to pilot a transportation data program

infra ai officially launched in 2022 and this year joined the first Delaware cohort of the gBETA Bronze Valley VentureLab accelerator. The DC-born startup, cofounded by Georgetown University grad Brandon Kelley and Sean Reed, resettled in Wilmington after the city’s Department of Public Works accepted its pitch to run a pilot of its transportation asset data AI service, focusing on a small portion (or microsite) of the city.

“We were looking for places to open an office that had a good standard of living and potential talent pools, and Delaware stuck out,” Kelley told Technical.ly. “It was one of those places that was on our shortlist, so with a rollout of our pilot project with the city, it really became a win-win for us where we get to test our solution in the market, but also get the opportunity to house the business in Wilmington, and, as we grow, to tap into the community.”

What does infra ai do?

The company and its 360-degree cameras collect data around transportation assets and uses it to manage them more efficiently.

“One of the things that we’ve noticed was that there was a lack of accessible, usable data to inform everything from budgeting to where to put your staff from a maintenance perspective to trends analysis — how’s the lifecycle of all the assets within my city evolving?” Kelley said. “We were frustrated with a lack of solutions or out there, so [my business partner and I] came together and decided to create it ourselves.”

infra ai cofounder Brandon Kelley. (Courtesy photo)

Using AI, it keeps track of the condition of the city’s assets — guardrails, stop signs, light posts and all the things we pass by every day on the roads. Once digitally captured, the company is able to assess trends over time, such as places where more incidents occur and where there’s more wear and tear. From there, cities can determine where the maintenance needs are greatest.

Contractors collect the 360-degree imagery with cameras fixed on vehicles or on foot, which is then processed to tag the assets, which infra ai turns into a digital representation of the city housed on a cloud that the client can access through an internet browser.

Though the 360-degree imagery component is central, infra ai doesn’t use virtual reality. Its digital cities are accessed on the client laptops and tablets they use throughout the day. For example: A Public Works employee can easily share a note on a specific location in the city with a Parks and Recreation employee using the tool.

“You can toggle between a 360 image or a 2D image and really get up close to the assets that you’re examining,” Kelley said. “We also have an overlay similar to Google, where you can have a bird’s eye view and actually see where you are in the city.”

Image-collecting contractors in most cases will capture locations either once a month or quarterly. As the company grows, the team plans to use municipal vehicles like street sweepers and waste collection trucks for the most efficient data collection in parts of the city.

Next steps

With the gBETA accelerator cohort coming to an end, Kelley and infra ai’s five-person team are gearing up to scale in the municipal and civil engineering markets, as well as fundraising after bootstrapping the startup in the beginning.

The much-anticipated gBETA Bronze Valley VentureLab Delaware accelerator experience has been “phenomenal” for infra ai so far, per Kelley.

“I graduated from business school,” he said. Yet “what the accelerator brought to us was real-life examples of people that have gone from ideation through startup to scaling, with best practices and all kinds of resources from different disciplines that would ordinarily be difficult to track down. I tell everyone how great it is from an exposure standpoint. It’s a short program, but in seven weeks they cram a lot into it.”

In addition to infra ai, the startups selected for the first gBETA Bronze Valley VentureLab Delaware accelerator are Toivoa, Rush Roto, Sika and The Difference. All five startups will be showcased at an event at CSC Station in Wilmington on Aug. 3.

“We couldn’t be happier with where we are,” Kelley said. “We’re very bullish, and very excited about where we’re going.”