Construction and mining equipment giant Caterpillar is doubling down on its digital transformation of the mining industry by acquiring Skycatch. The San Francisco-based mining technology company uses drones to generate AI-powered geospatial data.
By acquiring Skycatch, Caterpillar said its goal is to “help customers optimize material movement.”The move follows a transaction earlier this year to acquire RPMGlobal Holdings Limited, an Australian-based mining software company. Terms of the deals were not disclosed.
“Acquiring Skycatch aligns with our strategy to solve our customers’ toughest challenges,” Denise Johnson, group president, Caterpillar Resource Industries, said in a statement. “By integrating near-real-time, high-resolution spatial data into both RPM and MineStar solutions, we can help customers improve mine site performance by enhancing safety, productivity and predictability across their operations using both staffed and autonomous fleets.”
Tech enables next-gen mining
Skycatch’s technology combines high-frequency, precise, geospatial data with a suite of AI-powered solutions. The AI solutions then identify, measure and interact with the data to improve operations and accelerate decision-making, the company said.
“Skycatch’s ability to process large volumes of spatial data at dramatically improved speeds opens up a fundamentally different way of operating,” RPMGlobal CEO Richard Mathews said. “With a near real-time spatial view of the operation, miners can adjust plans as conditions change, improve alignment between planning and execution, and deliver more predictable outcomes.”
Skycatch generates a near-real-time digital twin of a mining site and integrates it with existing software. Customers can then incorporate the data into their planning and execution workflows, Skycatch said.
“We’re incredibly proud of what Skycatch has built over the past decade and excited for this next chapter with Caterpillar,” said Christian Sanz, Skycatch founder and CEO. “This next step strengthens our ability to support our customers while increasing the value we can deliver.”
Don’t miss what’s next. Subscribe to Dallas Innovates.
Track Dallas-Fort Worth’s business and innovation landscape with our curated news in your inbox Tuesday-Thursday.
R E A D N E X T
-
Gov. Greg Abbott joined company executives to announce the investment, which is part of Caterpillar’s 5-year, $100M effort to support manufacturing’s digital transformation.
-
Michael Roughsedge, who most recently served as global chief sales officer at Avanade, replaces company founder Mike Reinhart, who will transition to the role of chairman of the board.
-
Teladoc co-founder Michael Gorton wants people to be able to watch their favorite book. His latest startup turns novels into cinematic, episodic video—a "fourth book format" after print, ebook, and audiobook. It begins streaming its first title July 14, backed by a $2 million raise and an Emmy-winning "Band of Brothers" producer who's relocating to Dallas.
-
Bottle Rocket founder and serial entrepreneur Calvin Carter and AI programmer-turned-medical-doctor Alex Sheppert developed Matic's agentic AI to take care of the busywork—"so physicians can focus on the patient and practices can optimize care."
-
After 18 months of working with select enterprise customers, founder and CEO Kalyan Kommineni says its agents are helping supply chain teams recover margin, cut costs and respond to customers faster.
-
The company said that the strategic transaction positions Fortress Solutions Holdings as the parent organization to both Fortress Solutions and Dimension Energy Solutions. The new structure is a deliberate expansion into the broader critical infrastructure landscape, bringing telecom and energy capabilities together in one platform.
-
Cartesian's global footprint includes London, Boston, New York, and Paris, with several hundred experts supporting clients in key international markets, primarily in North America and EMEA. The combined organization has more than 5,000 specialists across AI services, data, analytics, cloud, and user experience, serving a diverse portfolio of Fortune 1000 companies and global enterprises.
-
The Dallas-based unicorn added Adriel Sanchez as it looks to accelerate global growth, expand into new industries, and advance its agentic AI strategy.
-
“By combining WinWire’s deep expertise in cloud-native development and agentic AI with NTT DATA’s global scale," NTT DATA CEO Abhijit Dubey said, "this positions us to lead the shift to enterprise AI, enabling clients to move from experimentation to enterprise-wide deployment and achieve meaningful business outcomes.”
-
Launched in September 2024, the FLITES program is a modernized, web-based logistics and item cataloging system. It replaced the outdated 50-year-old Item Management Control System, which had been used to manage the Air Force’s vast inventory of aircraft and equipment parts
