catastrophe-modeling
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Understory Spent a Decade Measuring Hail. Then It Learned the Money Was in Moving Cars.
The Madison startup began with a clever weather station and a consumer product nobody could use. Its second act turns ground-level storm data into insurance - and gives customers a reason to act before the hail arrives.
The Quiet Machine That Helps Insurance Price the Unthinkable
Before an insurer prices a hurricane, spots a suspicious claim, or estimates a ruined kitchen, there is a good chance Verisk is somewhere in the workflow. The 55-year-old data company has become part utility, part software network, and part laboratory for risk.
Archipelago
Archipelago is an AI-powered risk data platform that connects large commercial property owners with their insurance markets, turning messy schedules of values, loss runs and engineering reports into clean, broker-ready submissions. Founded in 2018 by RMS co-founder Hemant Shah, the San Francisco-based company digitizes property risk for portfolios totaling trillions of dollars in insured value.
Hemant Shah
Hemant Shah is a serial entrepreneur and catastrophe risk pioneer who co-founded Risk Management Solutions (RMS) in 1989 as a Stanford grad student and built it into a $300M+ global leader in catastrophe modeling over nearly 30 years. He then co-founded Archipelago in 2018, an AI-powered commercial property risk data platform that now manages over $12 trillion in insured properties and has raised $72M+ in venture funding. Shah transitioned to Executive Chairman of Archipelago in July 2023 and in 2025 joined FortressFire as Vice Chairman, continuing his mission to bring data intelligence to the most consequential risks facing the built environment.