skycatch
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Christian Sanz Built a Map That Could Keep Up With the Ground
He began with homemade drones, free construction-site maps, and a question about what a flying camera could make newly visible. Thirteen years later, Skycatch became part of Caterpillar - proof that the useful product was never the aircraft, but a faster version of reality.
Skycatch
Skycatch is a San Francisco drone-data company that turns aerial imagery into centimeter-accurate 3D and 4D models of mines, construction sites, and energy facilities. Founded in 2013 by Christian Sanz and Christopher Bumgardner, it pairs custom DJI-built drones and on-site edge computers with a cloud photogrammetry engine and AI to give industrial operators near-real-time maps of the physical world. Backed by Google Ventures, Komatsu, Autodesk, and others, Skycatch was acquired by Caterpillar in July 2026 to strengthen its data-driven mining technology portfolio.