As AI systems increasingly need to understand and navigate the physical world, the new mission-driven foundation establishes an open network that delivers aerial imagery 900x more detailed, 200x faster, and 50x more affordable than traditional options, enabling unprecedented applications in city planning, environmental monitoring, and autonomous systems.
April 17, 2025 — George Town, Cayman Islands — Today marks the launch of the LayerDrone Foundation, a mission-driven organization established to develop and maintain the LayerDrone Network, an open, decentralized network for capturing ultra-high resolution Earth imagery through a community of drone pilots. The timing of this launch coincides with a critical juncture where the need for high-resolution spatial data has never been more urgent, as AI and autonomous systems increasingly require precise visual understanding of our physical world.
The LayerDrone Network’s launch represents a significant evolution in Earth imaging technology, moving from a centralized commercial model to an open network protocol where anyone can contribute or build applications. This structure enables true decentralization, community governance, and the standardization needed to power next-generation spatial AI applications ranging from disaster response to autonomous vehicle training.
Spatial AI represents a fundamental shift in how artificial intelligence interacts with our world. Unlike traditional AI systems that process text, images, or structured data in isolation, spatial AI understands the three-dimensional relationships between objects and can reason about physical spaces the way humans do. This technology requires vastly more detailed imagery than what's currently available from satellites.
Spexi Geospatial Inc., which developed the underlying technology LayerDrone uses, will continue as the network's founding core contributor, providing applications that interface with the LayerDrone Network while operating as a separate commercial entity.
“Building AI systems that truly understand and navigate the real world means training them on data that captures the environment with human-level nuance,” says Bill Lakeland, CEO of Spexi. “When self-driving cars need to tell the difference between a shadow and a pothole, or disaster crews must detect fine cracks in a compromised bridge, centimetre-level resolution isn’t a luxury, it’s essential. Use cases like these are growing at an unprecedented pace, and unlocking their potential starts with the kind of precise data foundation LayerDrone provides.”
Key highlights of the LayerDrone Network include:
The Foundation will introduce a utility token to power the network, enabling pilot incentives, governance participation, and network access features.
"The LayerDrone Foundation creates the governance structure needed to scale a truly decentralized Earth imagery network," said Alec Wilson, COO of Spexi. "Similar to how open internet protocols enabled the explosion of web applications, LayerDrone's open protocol will create the conditions for massive innovation in spatial AI—and countless other applications that can leverage drone-quality imagery at these unprecedented scales."
For more information or to get involved, visit www.layerdrone.org.
About the LayerDrone Foundation
LayerDrone is the foundation for spatial AI. A mission-driven organization dedicated to developing and maintaining Earth's most valuable imagery resource, LayerDrone stewards the network’s development, governance, and growth.
Welcome to LayerDrone: the world’s most detailed imaging network and the foundation for the next generation of AI and GIS applications.