Spoor launched in 2021 with the goal of using computer vision to help reduce the impact of wind turbines on local bird populations. Now, the startup has proven its technology works and is seeing demand from wind farms and beyond.
Based in Oslo, Norway, Spoor has built software that uses computer vision to track and identify bird populations and migration patterns. The software can detect birds within a 2.5-kilometer radius, or about 1.5 miles, and can work with any off-the-shelf high-resolution camera.
Wind farm operators can use this information to better plan where wind farms should be located and to help them navigate migration patterns. For example, a wind farm could slow down its turbines, or even stop them entirely, during heavy periods of local migration.
Spoor’s co-founder and CEO, Ask Helseth, explained that he got interested in this space after learning that wind farms lacked effective tracking methods, despite many countries having strict rules around where wind farms can be built and how they can operate due to local bird populations. He noted that the expectations from regulators are growing but the industry did not have a great tool, often relying on people in the field with binoculars and trained dogs to find out how many birds were colliding with the turbines.
Helseth stated that since then, the company has proven the need for this technology and worked to make it better. At the time of its seed raise in 2024, Spoor was able to track birds in a 1-kilometer range, which has since doubled. As the company has collected more data to feed into its AI model, it has been able to improve its bird identification accuracy to about 96 percent.
Identifying the species of the bird adds another valuable layer for clients. The company employs an in-house ornithologist to help train the model on new types of birds or species. Having deployments in other countries means including rare species in the database.
Spoor now works across three continents and with more than 20 of the world’s largest energy companies. It has also started to see interest from other industries such as airports and aquaculture farms. The company has a partnership with Rio Tinto, a London-based mining giant, to track bats.
There has also been interest in using its tech to track other objects of similar size, like drones. Helseth joked that drones are like a plastic bird in their system, moving in a different way and having a different shape and size. While they currently discard that data, they are receiving interest in it.
Spoor recently raised an 8 million euro Series A round led by SET Ventures with participation from Ørsted Ventures and Superorganism in addition to strategic investors.
Helseth predicts that interest in this type of technology will only 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 the local bird population and imposed hundreds of millions in fines.
He stated that their mission is to enable industry and nature to coexist. They have started on that journey, but are still a small startup with a lot to prove. In the coming years, they want to cement their position in the wind industry and become a global leader to tackle these challenges, while also building proof points that this technology has value beyond that main category.