Wingbits has raised $3.5 million in a seed round to help it develop the world’s best flight tracking network. The round was led by Borderless Capital and Tribe Capital, alongside existing investor Antler. The Stockholm-based startup uses blockchain technology to reward the global community of flight trackers, helping to build an unparalleled network. The funding will support Wingbits as they grow their team and product.
TFN asked Wingbits co-founders, Robin Wingardh and Alex Lungu, more about their business and their plans.
From buy-now-pay-later to flight tracking
Wingardh and Lungu both met during Antler’s 2023 Stockholm residency. Both had come from buy-now-pay-later payments provider Klarna, so the step into flight tracking might seem strange.
“The idea for Wingbits came from a podcast discussing the sale of ADS-B Exchange,” said Wingardh, referring to a crowdsourcing platform used by tracking hobbyists. “When the acquisition took place, there was a significant uproar in their community, and they ended up losing a large portion of their data providers.”
Lungu had a deeper look into the model, and realised that while the community was generating and sharing data for the love of tracking, there were significant profits being made from the data, and the hobbyists received nothing. Wingardh and Lungu decided to use their infrastructure experience to create a platform that incentivised and rewarded those providing the data.
It was this concept that attracted their first investment from zero-day investor Antler. “They are empowering an overlooked, but deeply engaged, community to create the world’s best flight tracking network,” said Antler Partner, Oscar Westergard. “This will lead to real improvements across the global aviation industry.”
A huge market, not just Air Traffic Control
Those who have curiously browsed sites like FlightRadar may have assumed that they were looking at Air Traffic Control (ATC) data. However, ATC is far from the only user of flight tracking data, and the total market is expected to be worth $22 billion by next year.
In fact, ATC is a tiny part of the market, says Wingardh, “there are large customers across nearly every segment of aviation, including data analytics, crew planning, gate slot optimisation, emissions monitoring, predictive maintenance, fleet tracking for aircraft lessors, asset management, financial institutions monitoring specific jet movements, insurance, logistics, and more.” And all these businesses were reliant on data provided, for free, by individuals with a passion for flight tracking.
This situation created the need for services like Wingbits, “someone needs to collect this vast amount of data from thousands of people around the globe, aggregate it, clean it, and provide it in a format that is suitable for the end user,” Wingardh explained.
What makes Wingbits different is that, instead of just taking the data, they are using blockchain to create a system that that rewards that data, while also verifying authenticity to make the skies even safer. It has the potential for contributors to earn NFTs for their contribution, Wingardh told us. “Over time, these tokens will also come with governance and voting rights within the project,” he explained. “Having our own token introduces a social aspect, as it can only be earned by actively participating in the project.”
Growing the Wingbits network
Their network has grown substantially through word-of-mouth. Ending 2023 with just 40 stations, the network now has more than 1,600 antennae in place. And Wingbits model is encouraging network growth in areas with poorer coverage.
“The largest part of our network is in the EU and US, but we’re seeing a growing community in areas like South America, Africa, and Asia,” said Wingardh. “Many people in our network are hosting 15–20 stations globally to cover empty areas, as these areas offer higher rewards compared to saturated regions. We will also promote more airport coverage by offering higher rewards for data points at specific altitudes, with ground-level coverage earning more than at 10,000 feet.”
Indeed, for something as important as flight tracking, rewarding the community seems well overdue. “I believe Wingbits has one of the most unique supply-side userbases out there, composed of passionate hobbyists who contribute hardware because they love flight tracking,” said Tribe Capital Investor Evan Park. “The industry is only just realising how powerful tapping into this 100k community of aviation hobbyists can be.”
Creating the most reliable flight tracking dataset
Wingbits plan to use the funding to accelerate their already rapid growth, and will be expanding their engineering team as well as enhancing their sales and marketing activities.
Wingardh believes that Wingbits provides a platform that is better for everyone from the bottom up. With the community being recognised and rewarded for their work, and the aviation industry benefiting from more secure and verified data.
“Aviation is growing, airspace is becoming more congested, and the demand for this data is increasing. We’re building a new type of flight tracking network that is more optimised due to an incentive model,” Wingardh said. “We believe we can deliver a higher quality data network to the aviation sector, benefiting all segments that rely on this data.”