Phil Delaney, CEO of Australian geospatial data analytics start-up, MapAI, has left the business to take on a new opportunity elsewhere, with FrontierSI’s CEO, Graeme Kernich, stepping in to serve as interim CEO.

The MapAI board says it is working closely with the leadership team to ensure effective oversight and a smooth transition.

“We thank Phil for his contributions to the development of MapAI over the past 18 months, including his tenure as inaugural MapAI CEO,” said FrontierSI’s Chair, Gillian Sparkes.

“With the partnerships, funding, scientific and leadership teams in place, we are well positioned to continue to develop and deliver world-class solutions in geospatial analytics. MapAI is all set and on track for its next phase.”

MapAI began as part of collaboration with the UNSW City Futures Research Centre and FrontierSI, before being spun off as its own entity last year.

“The MapAI product development is tracking well with an excellent technical team and operational capabilities,” said Kernich. “We are well-placed to build on the foundation and successes of 2024.”

The company’s platform takes plain language queries and interprets them to produce presentations of geospatial data, by using generative AI technology to produce the code that sits between the query and the data.

“Generative AI for us means creating geospatial software code that can be executed on data to answer a question,” Phil Delaney told Spatial Source last November.

“It’s essentially a link between a person’s question and complex geospatial data, to enable an answer to that question to be found.”

The company has had many successes in its relatively short life, attracting $1.3 million in a funding round that closed late last year, and being the subject of two awards in the 2024 Geospatial Excellence Awards for NSW: The Innovation Award (Medium to Large Businesses), which was awarded jointly to FrontierSI, UNSW, MapAI, ID Consulting, Geelong Council, and Tamworth Council for establishing MapAI; and the Technical Excellence Award, which was presented to the UNSW City Futures Research Centre and FrontierSI for establishing MapAI.

“The innovation pipeline for MapAI is in a very strong position,” said Scientia Professor Chris Pettit, Director of the UNSW City Futures Research Centre.

“We are excited to be employing new researchers and PhD students to support MapAI’s product development roadmap in 2025.”