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Highlights from the GenAI for Geospatial Challenge Kickoff in London

GenAI Meets Geospatial

On 8th October 2025, thriveGEO together with AWS, Women+ in Geospatial and Lunate AI hosted the GenAI for Geospatial Challenge Kickoff event at the Royal Geographical Society in London. The event brought together over 100 leading geospatial innovators, cloud architects, practitioners and investors, with attendees travelling from across the EMEA region to be part of this thought-provoking and inspiring event.

Workshop on Agentic AI with AWS

The day kicked off with an AWS Agentic AI workshop lead by AWS Solutions Architect Rebecca Meads, giving participants hands-on examples how the AWS ecosystem supports the development of innovative geospatial applications supported by GenAI.

Setting the Scene

The afternoon of the event had a full and varied program, containing keynotes, panel discussions and a fireside chat. Phil Cooper, Geospatial Tech Business Development at Amazon Web Services set the stage by sharing impressive GenAI geospatial applications from AWS customers, making use of tools from the AWS AI Stack, such as Amazon Sagemaker and Amazon Bedrock. Javier de la Torre, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Carto gave a sneak peek into the future of geospatial analyses, when GIS professionals will use agents to make better and faster spatial analyses. Samuel Barrett from Staff Research AI Engineer at LGND AI explored the future of Earth observation in which embeddings and generative will be two complementary tools: Embeddings to find, Generative to understand geospatial data. And Nadine Alameh, Founder of LunateAI took the audience on a journey of the GenAI for Geospatial Challenge noting the advancements in the last year on foundation models and the rise of startups working on applications transforming the geospatial landscape.

Official launch of GenAI for Geospatial Challenge - EMEA edition

The keynotes were a perfect gateway to the official launch of the EMEA edition of the GenAI for Geospatial challenge. The challenge invites innovators and practitioners to submit their bold ideas of big-impact geospatial applications using GenAI. To support these ideas, selected teams will receive $650,000 worth of AWS cloud credits, AWS landing zone support for enterprise-ready scaling and technical support from AWS experts. Participants will also be provided with community, visibility and recognition. Two winners from the previous challenge (James Banting from Sparkgeo and Josué Molina from Luxcarta) presented the outcomes of their challenge participation. Luxcarta developed BrightEarth, an on-demand AI-powered 3D mapping platform. Sparkgeo developed BNGenius, a digital expert for Biodiversity Net Gain Assessment and Optimization.

The official launch of the challenge was followed by two insightful panel discussions and a thought-provoking fireside chat. The two panel discussions were moderated by Emily Burke and Phil Cooper from Amazon Web Services and featured leading industry experts across the EMEA region: Ryan Averay (Wherobots), Donna Lyndsey (Donna Lyndsey Consulting), Shikoh Gitau (Qhala), Ed Parsons (Digital Geographer), Kat Semperi (Iceye), Ahmad Aldhalaan (GeoTech), Eren Unlu (Globeholder) and Andrew Pawloski (Element84).

Key takeaways from the discussions were:

Acceleration of developments: GenAI in the context of geospatial offers unprecedented opportunities enabling accelerated prototype and idea development
Increased focus on context: With GenAI, we now see a transformation moving from the ‘boring’ data crunching part to the more interesting part on how results can be effectively used and integrated into operational processes. The importance of asking the right questions will rise.
New currencies for geospatial analyses: Quality of embeddings and latency (how fast data can be accessed and moved over the internet) will become the new currency for geospatial analyses
Ensure equity: Applications of GenAI and geospatial vary across different EMEA regions and we need to work towards establishing equitable access to tools and resources
Establish trust: with all applications enabled through GenAI, establishment of trust of outcomes and results becomes key
Community and skills development: to make GenAI for Geospatial successful, we do not need more tools, but provide better support to use the existing tools and to train more people with relevant skills to use GenAI and geospatial ethically and effectively

An Investor's Perspective

A fireside chat with Lucas Bishop from Seraphim Space and moderated by Nadine Alameh concluded the official event. Lucas shared insights from a leading venture capital firm investing on SpaceTech startups. Key take aways from the fireside chat are:

Lead with the Problem: Don’t pitch “geospatial.” Pitch the solution and the impact. “Geospatial is in the engine room”, it’s not the story.
Focus on Outcomes: With AI, skip the hype and the jargon. Show how AI lowers barriers, scales the solution, simplifies access, etc. And if you’re building for safety-critical sectors like defense or insurance, make sure your AI is explainable so your solution can be trusted.
Size the Market: VCs chase scale. Go too niche or pick a market that has small margins (e.g. Agriculture), and returns shrink. Pitch a broad platform, and you risk losing your differentiator. Find that sweet spot – focused differentiation in a scalable market.
Build the Right Team: The best startups have someone on their leadership team from the industry they are serving – be it climate, defense, insurance, energy, etc. They speak the customer’s language and know the pain inside out. You can’t beat the insider perspective!

The event concluded with a networking reception at The Gore, offering attendees a chance to connect, share ideas, and get collectively excited about what a future of the geospatial industry with GenAI holds.

What's Next? Submit your bold idea

The Kickoff event is just the beginning: The Generative AI for Geospatial Challenge provides a platform, technical resources, community and visibility to realise bold and innovative ideas.

For startups and established companies registered in Europe, Middle East or Africa, now it is your turn: start crafting your bold, big-impact idea that leverages the power of GenAI, geospatial data and AWS. All entries must be submitted before the deadline on 7 December 2025.

Now it is your call: We’re looking for visionary ideas that leverage GenAI to solve critical geospatial problems and build scalable solutions on AWS. If you’ve got a world-changing idea, this is your chance to get it funded, developed, and scaled.

Don’t just observe the future of geospatial AI—build it.

Join us. Innovate with us. Lead with us.