Financial services firm Moody’s announced on Monday that it has agreed to acquire Cape Analytics, a geospatial AI startup, for an undisclosed sum.
The deal, which is expected to close in Q1, subject to customary closing conditions, will give Moody’s access to Cape’s geospatial AI analytics technology for insurance underwriting. With the tech, Moody’s plans to create a property database capable of delivering “address-specific” risk insights for its insurance clients, said Moody’s CEO Rob Fauber.
Cape’s exit comes as the insurance industry ramps up its adoption of AI and predictive analytics technologies. A 2024 survey by Conning, an insurance asset manager, found that 77% of insurers are in some stage of deploying AI, a 16-percentage-point increase from the previous year. By one estimate, the global AI in insurance market will be worth $79.86 billion by 2032.
Critics warn that AI technology could introduce biases and discriminatory decision-making into underwriting. Yet many insurers are forging ahead, spurred by AI’s promise to speed up claims processing and increase overall efficiency.
Suat Gedikli and Ryan Kottenstette founded Mountain View, California-based Cape in 2014. Kottenstette was previously a senior engineer at BMW, then a principal at Khosla, while Gedikli was a research engineer at robotics tech incubator Willow Garage.
Through partnerships with geospatial image providers, Cape obtains satellite images, then applies in-house algorithms to extract structured data, like whether a property has solar panels and the condition of a roof, and transform it into a structured property information database.
Kottenstette claims that nearly half of top property insurers, as well as some of the world’s leading banks, use Cape to inform their pricing and underwriting strategies.
Cape managed to raise $75 million in venture capital from investors including Formation 8, Pivot Investment Partners, and State Farm Ventures prior to its exit, and the company is cash-flow positive and profitable, according to Kottenstette.
Kottenstette said in a blog post that he believes Moody’s, combined with Cape, can bring “a much deeper set” of solutions to carriers’ underwriting workflows and “enable a much more complete view” of risk. Moody’s customers can expect more in-depth, property-specific data, Kottenstette added, including building characteristics, average annual loss estimates, valuations, and more.
“Moody’s access to broader, more diverse information gives us the ability to further broaden and deepen Cape solutions with the inclusion of additional, orthogonal, risk-relevant input data,” Kottenstette wrote. “Moody’s global scale could accelerate our expansion into international markets, [and its] footprint with financial stakeholders beyond insurance carriers may accelerate the adoption of Cape’s offerings within the mortgage ecosystem and those of other financial stakeholders.”
Cape is Moody’s first acquisition in 2025 — and its 23rd acquisition to date, according to funding database Tracxn. Cape adds to Moody’s other property-insurance-related mergers and acquisitions, including Praedicat, a provider of casualty insurance analytics, and RMS, a climate and natural disaster risk modeling firm.
