Member Spotlight: Wherobots
I sat down with Jia Yu, the co-founder of Wherobots, the spatial data ETL, analytics, and AI platform from the original creators of Apache Sedona. We explored a gap in the market, the importance of accessibility, and the relationship between open-source technology and climate tech.
Will Hespe: What kind of work do you do at Wherobots?
Jia Yu: My title at Wherobots is co-founder and chief architect. I'm primarily working on developing cloud-based, advanced spatial data processing analytics engines to help people better understand spatial data, and climate data in general. We leverage open-source technologies, in particular Apache Sedona, to create tools that can handle large-scale spatial data efficiently. My work on the cloud-based database engine is to help make spatial data analysis more accessible to a broader audience, and enable businesses and organizations to derive meaningful insights from the data they have about our planet.
Will Hespe: So how did Wherobots begin? I'd love to hear your perspective as a co-founder.
Jia Yu: Before founding Wherobots, I was a computer science researcher and a professor. I was doing my research and had the opportunity to start this open-source project called Apache Sedona. Apache Sedona is a cluster-computing database engine that can process massive amounts of geospatial data. Sedona was an open-source software from day one. We believed that making Sedona open-source technology could foster a community-driven approach to innovation, enable people to build robust solutions on top of Sedona, and benefit a vast range of industries, including climate tech. So Sedona laid the foundation of Wherobots. After working on Sedona for a couple years, we learned a lot about the climate tech industry. We decided to found Wherobots based on a shared vision among the co-founders. The emergence of new technologies, such as mobile phones, drones, self-driving cars, and satellites, enable people to capture a vast amount of geospatial data. However, there is a significant gap in the market for tools that can process and analyze this data at scale. So that's why we founded Wherobots—we want to make a tool that can help people make sense of such extensive and complex data. This kind of data is really crucial for people to understand our planet and address global climate issues.
Will Hespe: How do you think open-source, and accessibility in general, lends itself to climate tech as a field?
Jia Yu: In my view, open-source and accessibility tools are crucial for the advancement of climate tech. By making our tools and technologies open-source, we can enable researchers, practitioners, developers, and organizations around the world to collaborate and build interesting solutions on top of our technology. So this kind of approach will accelerate people to innovate, and ensure that solutions are tested and improved continuously.
Will Hespe: What advice do you have for someone going into climate tech?
Jia Yu: My advice is definitely focused on collaboration and community engagement. Climate challenges are very complex, and require help from multiple disciplines. So engaging with the open-source community, building up the community, and working with people from diverse backgrounds is really important for the technology. For someone that just got into this industry— to quickly understand it, start to contribute.
Will Hespe: I think that lends itself to my last question—why did you choose to join 9Zero?
Jia Yu: At Wherobots, we've made a strategic decision to join 9Zero, driven by our commitment to advancing climate tech. I believe 9Zero provides a collaborative environment where innovators and leaders in the field can come together to share ideas, resources, and expertise. We really want to be part of this community. We believe that being part of this community can help us to leverage the network of people who have the same background. 9Zero is focused on supporting startups and fostering innovation, which aligns perfectly with our mission at Wherobots.
