This article originally appeared in the May/June issue of Startups Magazine. Click here to subscribe

A founder with a mission

Born amidst the North Karelian landscapes of East Finland, Hietala is a nature lover at heart which is what drives him and Kelluu towards a better tomorrow. Working within tech entrepreneurship for the past 20 years, Janne was almost ready to retire.

“I joked that the only company in the world that would have an inspiring enough mission for me to work on was SpaceX! Enabling humanity to become a multi-planetary species sounds great, but the only thing stopping me is that they don’t have operations here in East Finland.”

However, this changed when Janne met fellow co-founders Jiri Jormakka, COO, and Jouni Lintu, Lead Scientist, who offered an ambitious mission captivating enough to keep him in the game. “When I met Kelluu founders and joined as a co-founder, I felt that this company has equally ambitious opportunity and mission. To help sustain habitation here on Earth. By using the data we are able to provide, we can solve some of the most difficult challenges facing the Earth and the future of humanity.”

Getting Kelluu into the skies

Kelluu was founded with the vision to build and operate its own autonomous airship fleet that could be mass-manufactured for different scales.

In 2018, Hietala, Jormakka, and Lintu set out to create their airship vision, prototyping Kelluu’s first airship. “We met and started to build the first prototype in a ‘lab,’ in reality, a shed, as any good startup from Northern Karelia would do!

“We flew and tested it as much as possible, and, as often is with the first, it always crashed. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy.”

After this initial stage, a few key questions emerged that needed to be answered before Kelluu could really take off: How can Kelluu get more people and money on board? What sort of business model would Kelluu follow? And crucially, would Kelluu be an airship seller or focus more on services and data?

These questions would soon be answered in 2019 when service sales got a big yes from a critical infrastructure customer who effectively told Kelluu: ‘This flying thing with no emissions is nice, but we’re not going to buy any ships from you guys – it needs to be serviced.’ From here the path was clear.

“Now in April 2024, we have 27 people onboard to serve critical infrastructure and biodiversity-related customers. For example, Kelluu has flown over Finnish National Park Koli and documented some of the most beautiful Finnish landscapes, here in East Finland,” explained Hietala.

Kelluu’s offering

Kelluu is a data company that is utilising its AI-powered airship fleet to collect big data which can be converted into a digital twin of a given area. These digital twins are accurate 1:1 replicas of the analysed areas which can be used for a wide array of applications such as simulations, urban planning, forest management, virtual reality, and data recording.

Enthuses Hietala: “Our job is to create a truly data-driven world for better societies with solutions that are more accurate, ecological, or cost effective than any existing solution today.

“You can think of us as historians who are able to create a 1cm/px resolution digital twin of the earth – preserving how things are in the present and continually stored in an accurate representation for future generations.”

Not always smooth sailing

As demonstrated during the early days of Kelluu, it’s not always going to be a smooth ride on a startups’ journey, and Kelluu had big challenges to overcome before it could truly take of.

Hietala was open to speak about some of the biggest challenges faced by the company: “Kelluu is a deeptech company, which means we needed to solve some seriously difficult engineering problems that nobody else has ever come across to successfully create our lighter-than-air platform. We’ve needed to figure out things how do we meet regulatory challenges, because nobody else has operated something like this at the scale we are doing.” Hietala believes that developing light-than-air technology will enable a future where it sees mass use.

“Another challenge is the data, and oh boy is there a lot of it,” explained Hietala. “If we are sending a client 100,000 different images or 2TB of spectral data and just say ‘here you go, enjoy!’ there is no realistic way they are going to be able to use it. Having 10000x more information per square meter than what customers are used to requires innovative software approaches.” To meet these challenges, Kelluu built its own digital twin Cloud solution, which streamlines and streams data to customers' devices, including mobile and VR.

Flying high

With challenges met and a clear vision in mind, Kelluu is now enjoying the fruits of its labour. Hietala was excited to speak about some of the biggest highlights so far: “Our collaboration with Terrafame, one of the world’s leading low-CO2 battery chemical-producing companies, was initiated in 2023 and we have recently signed a multi-year agreement to further expand our collaboration. The digital twin created of Terrafame’s industrial site is an exact replica of the area and it enables virtual development and real-time monitoring of the site. Continuous updates to the digital twin enable the analysis of data and the performance of simulations as if working directly with physical objects.” For the Kelluu team, this has been a proof of their concept and a fantastic opportunity to refine what they have been working on.

For Hietala personally, other highlights stand out: “Every day we are doing something that gives me goosebumps. Just seeing the airships fly is a reminder that we are doing something nobody else has done – we are not just making aviation history, but we are building a better future for humanity.

“The experience of seeing airships fly gives you a weird uncanny sensation – because they float in the air. It’s very serene and zen-like. Like the air is now water, and from a physics perspective, it is.”

The next mission

Kelluu currently is expanding on what it has, covering larger areas and increasing measurement capabilities. Looking more broadly, Hietala expands, “Our vision is to operate an autonomous fleet of 500 airships that can cover Europe. This means that we are directly removing CO2 emissions created by airplanes and helicopters currently used in aerial imaging and inspection. It’s a superior technology that’s not just safer, lower cost but also emission-free.”

Kelluu is also looking to lead the way in AI within its sector, “There are already companies like Google, NVIDIA, and Microsoft looking to build digital twins of the earth, but it’s all based on satellite or airplane-based data. We have the logistics to solve this at a large scale at a resolution unforeseen before. This data combined with recent advancements with Generative AI will give us the opportunity to have a real-world AI that will help us to decrease our environmental impact and build climate proof societies. So we are very excited to be working with some of the leaders in this space,” explained Hietala.