Alaska Airlines venture capital lab creates its first startup: Odysee

Odysee CEO Steve Casley sees dollar signs in the information. More specifically, artificial intelligence-based software that may analyze vast amounts of information to assist industrial airlines profit from complex flight schedules.

That’s exactly what Odysee, the first startup born from the aviation-focused research lab created by Alaska Airlines and UP.Labs, is doing. The two corporations launched a venture lab last 12 months to create startups designed to resolve specific problems in air travel, reminiscent of guest experience, operational efficiency, aircraft maintenance, routing and revenue management. Odysee said it raised $5 million in a pre-seed round led by UP.Partners, a Los Angeles-based VC firm affiliated with UP.Labs. Alaska Star Ventures, which launched in October 2021, has invested $15 million in UP.Partners’ inaugural early-stage fund.

According to Casley, Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci flagged a scheduling problem early on. And no wonder. While there may be software available to investigate flight data and plan flights, Casley says they lack the type of real-time data – and, most significantly, revenue forecasts – that Odysee produces.

“You need tools to make better decisions because typically in airlines, schedule changes are made by experienced planners who do it intuitively,” Casley said in a recent interview. “I would not say what their seat within the pants is because numerous the time they will likely be right because they’ve seen each bad and good changes. But they never actually had the information to support their decisions.

According to the corporate, the data-enabled software can run a whole lot of simulations in seconds to quickly determine how schedule changes could impact revenue, profits and reliability.

“There are other optimizers, but to my knowledge none of these models or any optimization company offers revenue forecasts,” Casley said.

The machine learning model built by Odysee accommodates roughly 42 attributes, which include every part from departure time and day to traffic volumes on a selected route and competition schedules. The startup present in early simulations that it was able to save lots of a whole lot of hundreds of dollars in Alaska with only one schedule change.

Odysee is currently conducting user acceptance testing in Alaska. Once all that is accomplished, Alaska will begin a trial period of the software, which Casley said will begin in late October.

That’s a brief timeframe, considering UP.LAbs and Alaska Airlines only established the flight lab a 12 months ago. A fast path to industrial products is one among the major benefits of UP.Labs. UP.Labs, which launched for the first time in 2022, is structured as a venture lab with a brand new variety of financial investment vehicle. The company partners with large corporations reminiscent of Porsche, Alaska Airlines, and most recently JB Hunt to launch startups with recent business models aimed toward solving the industry’s biggest problems. Each partnership will create six startups over three years.

Under the UP.Labs structure, these startups is not going to be created solely to serve a company partner – on this case, Alaska Airlines. Rather, they may operate independently and as industrial enterprises from the outset, ultimately generating revenue from the sale of services or products throughout the industry.