Most building failures don’t announce themselves. They develop quietly—behind façades, inside materials, along seams and joints—until the cost of ignoring them becomes unavoidable.
Aethero exists to surface those problems early.
Founded in North Dakota and operating nationally, Aethero Advanced Analytics uses drones, thermal sensing, and physics-based modeling to evaluate how buildings are performing.
“We’re not a commercial real estate company,” said Karthik Balaji, Aethero’s Head of Technology & Development. “We don’t target buildings as assets. We work with buildings as operating systems.”
That distinction shapes everything Aethero does—and who their work is built for.
A Company Built On Precision
Aethero’s leadership combines entrepreneurial experience with deep technical grounding. CEO and founder Matt Dunlevy brings a background in drone operations and venture building, while Balaji’s expertise spans energy systems, infrastructure, and applied physics.
Together, they’ve positioned Aethero less as a flashy startup and more as a technical partner—one designed to become a standard part of how facilities understand and maintain their assets.
When architects, engineers, and operators plan long-term performance, Balaji wants Aethero to be a given.
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Built For Facilities, Not Speculation
While Aethero operates in the built environment, its customers aren’t traditional commercial real estate owners. Instead, the company works with organizations where building performance directly affects operations and revenue: hospitals, schools, data centers, and specialized facilities.
“In these environments, the building itself is part of the business,” Balaji said. “If it underperforms, the organization feels it immediately— through downtime, inefficiency, risk, or cost.”
That focus has pulled Aethero into healthcare systems, public infrastructure, education, and largescale facilities management—sectors where maintenance decisions carry real consequences and guesswork is expensive.
“Aethero’s technology takes the guesswork out of finding solutions to optimize the performance of infrastructure that is critical to the success of businesses,” Dunlevy said.
Beyond Thermal Images
At a glance, Aethero’s work looks familiar: drones capturing highresolution RGB and thermal imagery across roofs, walls, windows, joints, and façades.
But the real differentiation happens after the flight.
“We’re not just producing thermal images,” Balaji said. “We’re extracting per-pixel sensor data and running it through physics-based models to quantify material performance.”
Rather than highlighting vague “hot” or “cold” spots, Aethero analyzes how heat, moisture, and materials interact—allowing the team to identify insulation breakdown, sealing failures, moisture behavior, and early-stage degradation before visible damage appears.
The result is a defensible, data-backed understanding of building health—one that facilities teams can use to prioritize repairs, plan capital improvements, and justify decisions with confidence.
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A $7 Million Proof Point In Colorado
One of Aethero’s clearest validations came in 2023 during an assessment of a 670,000-square-foot hospital in Denver.
Engineers had warned the hospital that nearly 10,000 exterior trim stones were at risk of detaching, recommending a full replacement estimated at $8 million.
Aethero scanned the building and applied a non-destructive analysis using thermal imaging and modeling to determine which stones were actually failing, and which were not. Months later, an independent masonry team confirmed the findings.
Because of this, the hospital replaced only a fraction of the stones, avoiding more than $7 million in unnecessary costs.
“That project changed the conversation,” Balaji said. “It proved that this wasn’t just interesting technology—it was operationally valuable.”
Aethero’s technology takes the guesswork out of finding solutions to optimize the performance of infrastructure that is critical to the success of businesses."
From Snapshots To Systems
Aethero’s workflow follows a consistent structure:
Data capture
Drone-based RGB and thermal imaging across the entire building envelope.
Modeling and integration
Imagery is assembled into orthomosaics and 3D digital twins, preserving spatial accuracy and context.
Material and defect analysis
Sensor-level data is evaluated using Aethero’s U.S. patent-protected technology to identify degradation, moisture behavior, insulation failures, and performance anomalies.
Actionable outputs
Findings are delivered through reports and dashboards that help owners prioritize maintenance and allocate capital based on real performance—not assumptions.
While the company initially delivered one-off assessments, its direction is moving toward recurring analytics— allowing clients to track changes over time and shift from reactive maintenance to proactive planning.
“Our team has developed worldclass technology that is U.S. patent-protected and powered by proprietary software developed inhouse to deliver unmatched insights to our customers,” Dunlevy said.
Schools, Hospitals, And Public Facilities
Beyond healthcare, Aethero has completed paid projects for public school facilities, including a multi-building site comprising an elementary school, middle school, and high school in collaboration with ICON Architects.
For public institutions facing aging infrastructure and limited budgets, Aethero’s data provides clarity— identifying where intervention matters most and where costly overcorrection can be avoided.
“These are environments where you have to be right,” Balaji said. “There’s no margin for guesswork.”
A Broader Infrastructure Vision
Aethero’s long-term ambition extends beyond buildings.
“Our major play is infrastructure imaging,” Balaji said. “Understanding what’s happening across complex systems—not just structures, but facilities and infrastructure as a whole.”
The same sensing and modeling approach used on buildings can be adapted to hangars, industrial facilities, and other critical infrastructure. Aethero has already completed work in specialized environments, including aircraft hangars for defense and aerospace partners.
For now, the company’s go-tomarket focus remains squarely on buildings—a wide, immediate need with clear demand. The broader infrastructure vision is a deliberate expansion, not a distraction.
“We’re building this step by step,” Balaji said. “You earn the right to scale by proving value first.”
“Our major play is infrastructure imaging. Understanding what’s happening across complex systems—not just structures, but facilities and infrastructure as a whole.”
Seeing What Others Miss
In a country facing aging buildings, deferred maintenance, and rising infrastructure costs, Aethero’s value proposition is straightforward: identify problems early, quantify them accurately, and reduce unnecessary spending.
And in a world where failure often hides in plain sight, that clarity can make all the difference.
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aethero.ai
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