phidea

ICEYE vs Zesty.ai — Risk imagery for US insurance, 2026.

ICEYE (7 named carriers) and Zesty.ai (16 named carriers) both sit at the risk imagery layer. Zero customer overlap in the public roster — they are addressing different segments of the same stack layer.

Last verified 2026-04-22 · methodology

TL;DR

  • ICEYE has 7 publicly-named carrier deployments; Zesty.ai has 16. Both at the risk imagery layer.
  • Zero customer overlap in the public roster. ICEYE and Zesty.ai are addressing different carriers within the same stack layer.
  • Both classified ai-native on Phidea's generation axis.
  • Both independent ownership.
  • Analyst coverage: 1 firm cover both, 2 only ICEYE, 2 only Zesty.ai.

Customer overlap

BucketCount
Named on ICEYE only7
Named on Zesty.ai only16
Named on both0
of which US-named on at least one side0

Only on ICEYE

  • Swiss Re (global)
  • Aon (global)
  • Guy Carpenter (US)
  • Tokio Marine Holdings (JP)
  • Descartes Underwriting (FR)
  • Global Parametrics (UK)
  • Insurity (P&C carriers via partnership) (US)

Only on Zesty.ai

  • Farmers Insurance (US)
  • California FAIR Plan Association (US)
  • The Cincinnati Insurance Company (US)
  • Amica Mutual Insurance (US)
  • MetLife (US)
  • CSAA Insurance Group (US)
  • Kin Insurance (US)
  • NEXT Insurance (US)
  • Marsh McLennan Agency (Private Client Services) (US)
  • Kingstone Insurance (US)
  • American European Insurance Group (US)
  • Harford Mutual Insurance Group (US)
  • …and 4 more on the vendor card.

Counts derived from 23sourced carrier-deployment entries across both vendor cards. Aggregate-only statements (e.g. “16 of the top 20”) excluded.

Stack position

Generation
ai-native
Stack layer
Risk imagery
Founded
2014
Lines
home, commercial, specialty, reinsurance
Replaces
optical satellite post event imagery, manual catastrophe field adjusting
Generation
ai-native
Stack layer
Risk imagery
Founded
2015
Lines
home, commercial
Replaces
regional wildfire risk zones, manual catastrophe underwriting

Ownership and corporate context

ICEYE
Type
independent

Source: Via Satellite

Zesty.ai
Type
independent

Source: ZestyAI

Carrier-segment specialization

ICEYE — geographic split

  • global
    2
  • US
    2
  • JP
    1
  • FR
    1
  • UK
    1

Zesty.ai — geographic split

  • US
    16

Analyst coverage differential

Both covered by
  • Reinsurance News · ICEYE (2024: ICEYE and Aon expand flood and wildfire data partnership to enhance event response) · Zesty.ai (2023: Aon and Zesty.ai gain approval for AI wildfire model in California)
Only ICEYE cited by
  • Artemis (2024: ICEYE launches hurricane solution that shows parametric potential)
  • TechCrunch (2020: Satellite radar startup ICEYE raises $87 million to continue to grow its operational constellation)
Only Zesty.ai cited by
  • Insurance Journal (2026: ZestyAI Provides AI-Driven Risk Analytics for Marsh McLennan Agency)
  • Insurance Innovation Reporter (2022: Zesty.ai Raises $33M in Series B Round)

Recent news (last 12 months)

No news items in the last 12 months for either tool.

Sourced limitations

  • ICEYE is a data provider, not a rating engine, policy-admin core, or claims workstation. Carriers buy Flood, Wildfire, or Hurricane Insights as a feed and plug the output into their own pricing, reserving, or FNOL tooling. Realising value requires parallel investment in the systems that consume the feed.
    Source: ICEYE
  • SAR data is physically constrained by revisit cadence and image-processing time: ICEYE's publicly stated service windows deliver initial hazard and damage data within 24 hours of a flood or hurricane event, with a 5-day window for final NYC pilot trigger analysis. For rapidly evolving events (flash floods, fast-moving wildfire fronts) the first-pass footprint may under-report peak extent and require overlays with on-the-ground sensors, as used in the NYC pilot.
    Source: Artemis
  • No Gartner, Celent, Forrester, or Novarica leader-quadrant placement surfaces in public indexing for 2023-2025. Coverage is concentrated in reinsurance and insurtech trade press (Artemis, Reinsurance News, Insurance Business America) and general tech press (TechCrunch, Via Satellite, SpaceNews), plus ICEYE's own carrier press releases.
    Source: Artemis
  • Zesty.ai is explicitly a catastrophe-peril specialist (wildfire, hail, wind, severe convective storm). Unlike Cape Analytics or Betterview/Nearmap, it is not positioned as a general-purpose structural property-attributes vendor — carriers that need broad roof-condition, pool, and pre-inspection feeds alongside catastrophe scoring typically procure Zesty in parallel with one of those imagery vendors rather than as a replacement.
    Source: ZestyAI
  • Regulatory exposure is concentrated in California and a small number of other states. Z-FIRE's rating-plan adoption depended on the California Department of Insurance's first-of-its-kind AI model approval in June 2021, and subsequent growth has followed state-by-state insurance-department filings — a slower path than unregulated underwriting-only deployments.
    Source: ZestyAI

Limitations published on Phidea are sourced to the underlying citation and reflect what is publicly named — not an exhaustive list. Consult the vendor card for the full record.

Frequently asked

Do any carriers run both ICEYE and Zesty.ai?
Not in Phidea's public roster. Across 23 sourced carrier-deployment entries on both vendor cards, zero carriers appear on both. The two tools are addressing different carriers within the same stack layer.
Who owns ICEYE and Zesty.ai?
ICEYE is independently held. Zesty.ai is independently held.
Which has more named US carriers?
Zesty.ai has the larger publicly-named US roster: ICEYE 2, Zesty.ai 16. Public-roster size is a coverage signal, not a quality signal — vendors with stronger NDAs may have larger actual US footprints than the public count shows.
Where are these tools positioned in the insurance stack?
Both sit at the risk imagery layer. ICEYE replaces optical satellite post event imagery, manual catastrophe field adjusting; Zesty.ai replaces regional wildfire risk zones, manual catastrophe underwriting.

Adjacent reading