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Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) start-up Stellerus Technology aims to be the world’s first provider of satellite-enabled three-dimensional wind data to help wind power, transport and insurance firms boost revenues, cut costs and manage risks, according to its founders.

Stellerus, founded in 2023 by the university’s academics, would leverage China’s cost competitiveness in satellite manufacturing to make global 3D wind data collection economically viable, said Su Hui, the chairwoman and co-founder.

3D wind data – wind direction and speed and their changes with altitude – is crucial for improving weather forecasting, especially severe climate events.

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“After I came to Hong Kong, I realised the technology for implementing such a project in mainland China was quite developed and the cost would be much lower than overseas,” Su said. “In the US, such a satellite could cost US$100 million to build, compared with 20 million yuan [US$2.8 million] in China.”

Su Hui, the chairwoman and co-founder of Stellerus Technology. Photo: Edmond So alt=Su Hui, the chairwoman and co-founder of Stellerus Technology. Photo: Edmond So>

Su, a hydraulic expert, joined the HKUST’s department of civil and environmental engineering in 2022 as chair professor. She was formerly a principal scientist and weather programme manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Nasa.

By deploying advanced optical sensors, Stellerus could collect data and use artificial intelligence to analyse carbon dioxide, methane and water vapour in the atmosphere to calculate changes in wind direction and speed, she said.

“Such detailed data is lacking for meteorological observation and analysis globally,” she said. “Various organisations, including Nasa, plan to embark on such a project, but none has been implemented so far due to the high cost of launching a satellite constellation.”

Nasa was testing laser technology for developing space-based 3D wind measurements, according to its website. It was also collaborating with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to develop advanced remote weather sensing instruments that can be flown aboard satellites to collect highly precise data to improve weather forecasting globally.

In August 2023, HKUST partnered with Chang Guang Satellite Technology – a Jilin government-backed firm and China’s first commercial remote sensing satellite company – to become Hong Kong’s first higher education institution to launch an Earth environmental satellite.

Stellerus paid the university a licensing fee to obtain wind prediction data, which was derived from high-resolution digital images, with each pixel depicting half a square metre of area on the ground.

Stellerus, the winner of the HKUST-Sino Group entrepreneurship competition last month, had been designing new satellites for climate observation, said CEO David Liu.

The Hong Kong Science and Technology Park-based company, which has raised “tens of millions” of dollars from investors since inception, aimed to launch a pair of satellites via the Tianzhou-10 spacecraft within the next 18 months, followed by another five, Liu added.

The six satellites would form a constellation, which should be sufficient for global coverage of wind data, Liu said, adding Stellerus aimed to supply the data to developers of applications for the aviation, shipping and insurance industries.

“The applications include aircraft route optimisation for fuel saving and air turbulence avoidance, shipping route planning for fuel efficiency, as well as climate risk management and product pricing by property and casualty insurers,” he said.

Stellerus was in advanced talks with wind-farm developers and state-owned power grid operators, which were interested in using its 3D wind data for a fee, Liu added.

China has the world’s largest fleet of wind farms.

The data would help wind farm operators enhance power sales and save tens of millions of yuan spent on building wind monitoring towers, said Jeffrey Xu Mingyuan, the chief technology officer at Stellerus.

“Currently, it is very costly to obtain accurate wind data, especially for offshore operators,” he said. “We aim to tackle the technology bottleneck by providing more affordable and better quality data useful for siting wind farms, energy storage, trading and grid access planning.”

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Speaking alongside Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Investment, Khalid Al-Falih, and Barclays Group CEO C.S. Venkatakrishnan, Porat painted a sweeping vision of AI’s economic, social, and scientific potential, highlighting how many Nobel prize-winners she is fortunate to work alongside at Alphabet. She framed artificial intelligence not merely as a technological advance, but as a transformative force capable of reshaping entire industries, powering economic growth, and driving human progress at an unprecedented pace.

Porat said “people are playing” with AI through chatbots, and that is “great, because that gets you on the journey. But then the question is: what does it mean for my country? What does it mean for my business?” She argued that it’s underappreciated how “we’re already living” through significant breakthroughs in health and science.

Could AI cure cancer?

Porat pointed to breakthroughs in health care as proof of AI’s broader promise. She highlighted DeepMind’s AlphaFold, which maps protein structures in 3D, noting it has been described as “the greatest contribution to drug discovery in our lifetime.” The open-source project has been used by millions of scientists in more than 190 countries, accelerating research into diseases previously considered intractable.

She also said significant work is being done on early diagnosis of diseases. “We all know early diagnosis can be the difference between survival or not or how difficult the course of treatment is.” In cancer, for instance, that comes in seeing metastatic cells early enough to treat the disease before it spreads. This is very much the proverbial “finding the needle in the haystack,” she said, likening its application to cybersecurity and finding malicious code.

“We should be able to cure cancer in our lifetime,” Porat asserted, calling AI a key driver of scientific discovery. She spoke of early cancer detection, AI-powered cybersecurity defenses that identify threats before they occur, and productivity gains that free workers “from the administrative tasks that take us away from what matters most.”

Balancing speed and responsibility

Porat and Venkatakrishnan both discussed how the moment demands urgency from governments and businesses alike. “Every head of state I meet,” Porat explained, “wants to be part of this digital transformation.” She pointed to staggering potential economic benefits, noting that estimates show AI could unlock a $200 billion GDP boost for Saudi Arabia and “trillions globally.” But unlocking that value, she argued, will require serious investment in both energy and infrastructure.

In the United States, for example, she said simply modernizing the electrical grid could create 100 gigawatts of unused capacity, a figure backed up by independent research. She said the power is effectively sitting there, “waiting to be connected.” Another bottleneck is a lack of talent in the form of the blue-collar trades, specifically electricians, Porat noted, echoing other Fortune 500 leaders such as Ford CEO Jim Farley. Google, she added, is investing in training programs for electricians as part of its workforce initiatives, acknowledging that technological progress only matters if societies prepare workers to participate in it. “There are jobs that come in trades as well as the outside across business.”

Venkatakrishnan discussed the “huge amount of investment, hundreds of billions if not trillions happening all over the world.” He impliclitly acknowledged discussions about a potential bubble in AI infrastructure, saying that “in all large capital-investment cycles, there will be some misallocation, some misinvestment. It’s always true. And I think that’s important for people to guard against.” He argued that, whether the demand turns out to be 1x or 5x of a certain projection, investing in infrastructure—and by extension the tradesmen who build and run it—is a wise choice. Venkatakrishnan added that major capital cycles also require partners you can trust and “who are there for the long term and who will help you through the teething troubles.”

Her message echoed themes of inclusion and global partnership that ran throughout the panel, particularly as Saudi Arabia positions itself as a regional hub for digital infrastructure and AI investment. Al-Falih emphasized his country’s long-term strategy of building supply chain resilience and energy capacity to power the digital economy of the future.

Porat closed by urging leaders to really dig in and reimagine what’s possible in their own organizations. The transformative potential of this technology, she said, lies not only in boosting productivity but in elevating human creativity and purpose.