Verdex

Verdex

Satellite Imagery Verification for Insurance

Winter 2026ActiveFintechInsuranceInsuranceAISan Francisco, CA, USA
Company
https://www.verdexai.com
Verdex replaces manual inspections in insurance with real-time digital audits. We use high-resolution satellite imagery to help insurers verify and settle claims without ever leaving their desks, starting with crop insurance. We are currently helping to insure over 11% of all American farmland.

Verdict

High Signal
Market Opportunity
Crop insurance is a $17B+ annual premium market in the US alone, with the USDA's FCIC backing enormous volumes. Extending to property/casualty and global ag insurance expands TAM substantially. The ICP is clear: crop insurers, reinsurers, and ag lenders who currently rely on expensive manual field adjusters. Monetization via SaaS or per-acre verification fees is straightforward.
Low Signal
Founder Signal
Jad has a Master's in CS from Dartmouth (2024-2025) and internships at KPMG (data science, 2024) and HPS (software engineering, 2021) — both short stints with no meaningful industry depth. Evan is a Dartmouth undergrad in Biomedical Engineering with a 3-month IDEXX internship and marketing consulting work at Dartmouth's entrepreneurship center — essentially zero relevant experience. Both are effectively fresh grads with no prior startup experience, no exits, and no deep industry tenure in insurance or agtech.
Medium Signal
Competition
No competitor data was surfaced, but the space has real players: Understory, Paladin (now part of Climate Corp), The Climate Corporation (Bayer), Descartes Underwriting, and satellite analytics providers like Planet Labs partnering with insurers. The differentiation angle — real-time continuous field verification vs. one-off snapshots — is meaningful but needs to be proven technically defensible against well-funded incumbents.
Medium Signal
Product
The claim of 'helping to insure over 11% of all American farmland' is a striking traction metric if real — that's tens of millions of acres. However, there's no pricing page, no customer logos, no live demo, and the website screenshot is completely black/unreadable. The product concept (satellite imagery digital twins for crop insurance claims) is substantive and well-defined, but external validation is thin.
OverallB Tier

The 11% of American farmland claim is eye-catching and, if verified, would be exceptional traction for a company this early — that's the single strongest signal here. The market is real, large, and underserved by digital tools. However, both founders are essentially fresh graduates with no prior startup experience, no deep industry relationships, and no meaningful full-time work history in insurance or agtech — Evan in particular has almost no technical background relevant to satellite imagery or ML. The black website screenshot and absence of any press or named customers raises questions about how mature the product actually is. This is a compelling thesis with weak team credentials that will live or die on whether that farmland traction claim is real and defensible.

Active Founders

Jad Bousselham
Jad Bousselham
Founder

Math + CS @ Dartmouth, where I built the world's best soybean yield prediction model using satellite imagery. Made in Morocco

Evan Rankin
Evan Rankin
Founder

Dartmouth '25 from Maine

Verdex
Verdex
TierB Tier
BatchWinter 2026
Team Size2
StatusActive
LocationSan Francisco, CA, USA