Rainbow Weather Raises $5.5M To Refine Real-Time Weather Forecasting

The Warsaw-based climate tech startup specialises in hyperlocal, minute-by-minute forecasts, concentrating on conditions in the coming hours rather than long-term predictions.

The funding round was supported by a syndicate of investors, including Yuri Gurski, founder of Flo Health, one of Europe’s most prominent consumer tech unicorns.

Rainbow Weather’s flagship product is a mobile app providing four-hour precipitation forecasts from the exact moment a user checks the weather.

Read Also - Vennre Raises $9.6M To Expand Its Private Market Platform Across MENA

Open the app at 3:51 am, and it forecasts conditions through 7:51 am, refreshed every 10 minutes and mapped to a one-square-kilometre grid offering the temporal and spatial precision the company says sets it apart from mainstream weather apps.

Most major weather providers, including AccuWeather, Apple Weather, and The Weather Company, still rely on simplified cloud-tracking methods or large-scale numerical models intended for longer-term forecasts. Rainbow Weather says these approaches often struggle to keep up when conditions change rapidly.

“Many legacy forecasting providers rely on optical flow for short-term precipitation forecasting. That’s a fast but simplistic method that treats clouds as shapes in motion, without any understanding of atmospheric physics,” explained Alexander Matveenko, co-founder of Rainbow Weather. “A second category of services uses large-scale mathematical models that do incorporate physical principles, but they’re so cumbersome and slow that they can’t respond quickly to real-time weather changes.”

Rainbow Weather positions itself between traditional long term models and simplified forecasting by using machine learning to merge high-resolution data from radar, satellites, weather stations and even smartphone barometers. This fusion reduces noise and bias in individual datasets enabling faster more accurate forecasts than conventional systems.

The app initially focused on short term precipitation but has since expanded to track wildfires and hurricanes responding to events like the Palisades fire in Los Angeles. This reflects the company’s broader goal: becoming a real-time risk awareness tool not just a rain predictor.

The new $5.5M funding will extend forecasting from four hours to 24, incorporate additional weather parameters, and grow Rainbow Weather’s B2B offerings. The commercial weather intelligence market is projected to grow steadily over the next decade, driven by industries like logistics, agriculture, aviation and drone operations that depend on precise, near-term forecasts.

Rainbow Weather has surpassed one million installs and launched APIs for businesses that “can’t afford to get weather wrong.” It has also partnered with an unnamed long-term forecasting firm, supplying near-term data to improve broader climate models.

The founding team has a track record in applied AI exits. CEO Yuriy Melnichek founded AIMatter, acquired by Google, and consumer apps later bought by Pinterest and Farfetch. Co-founder Matveenko previously sold mapping startup MapData to Mapbox.

Alongside commercial products the team runs weatherindex.ai an open source platform that evaluates short term precipitation forecasts from major providers in real time comparing them against verified airport weather reports using standard accuracy metrics a rare move in an industry not known for transparency.

Transparency is central to Rainbow Weather’s pitch. As climate volatility rises, the company believes users and businesses will increasingly prioritise immediate trustworthy forecasts over predictions for next week.

About Rainbow Weather

Rainbow Weather is a next generation climate tech startup specialising in ultra-accurate short-term forecasts. Founded in 2021 by Yuriy Melnichek creator of AIMatter (acquired by Google), Vochi (acquired by Pinterest), and Wanna (acquired by Farfetch) and Alexander Matveenko, who previously sold AI mapping startup MapData to Mapbox in 2017.