the maturity of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), and cloud computing’s
scalability. Jupiter’s customer’s use these analytics to prepare the global economy for climate
change. Simultaneously running tens of thousands of atmospheric, oceanic, and hydraulic
simulations provides both the basis for directly calculating the probability of extreme events at
high resolution, and also the foundation for building AI models that can downscale global
solutions in ways that eliminate the need for expensive dynamical models. This presentation will
describe various aspects of Jupiter’s AI as applied to extreme heat and flood risks associated
with climate change. It will address the appropriateness of AI and identify areas where
dynamical models outperform. In particular, we will examine the intelligent use of both
dynamical models and AI that leads to the best local predictions related to global projections.
Rich Sorkin is the Chairman, CEO and cofounder of Jupiter Intelligence, based in Silicon Valley.
Jupiter provides data analysis through predictive modeling to help governments, organizations
and society manage risks from climate change, natural disasters, and sea level rise. Led by
veterans of Fortune 100 companies, machine learning pioneers, a Nobel Prize winner, and
scientists from NOAA and the National Science Foundation, the firm offers services to predict
weather risks from one hour to 50+ years in the future.
In his three-decade-long career as a serial entrepreneur, executive, advisor, board member and
investor, he has led breakthrough companies in numerous industries. Sorkin focuses on
commercializing transformative technologies, with a significant concentration on financial
services, energy, media, politics, and the environment. A founder of multiple startups, his
companies have pioneered the use of satellite data and scalable cloud computing to predict
weather events for commodity traders and applied analytics to detect identity theft.
Sorkin is the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Zip2, an Internet 1.0 company best
known for analytics and visualization of geospatial data. He served as president of Kaggle prior
to its acquisition by Google, leading the introduction of big data predictive analytics into the
enterprise market and serving as the company’s premier industry strategist.
Sorkin began his career as a consultant at Bain & Company. Before moving to Silicon Valley to
focus on leading technology companies, he helped initiate research of the supercomputer
industry at Goldman Sachs. After graduating business school, he ran the Sound Blaster
business at Creative Labs during the time it gained market dominance, growing revenues from
under $100M to close to $1 billion.
Sorkin is an alumnus of Yale University and Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he
was a Lockheed Scholar. He has served as a Board Member at publicly-traded companies,
private firms, the Yale University Development Board, and several non-profit organizations.
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