What EarthCube does

EarthCube is a community-driven, NSF-funded cyberinfrastructure initiative for the geosciences, established around 2011-2013 as a partnership between the NSF Directorate for Geosciences (GEO) and the NSF Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC). The organization operates as a research coordination program rather than a commercial entity, with funding flowing through NSF grants (documented awards #1928208 and #2209863) and no commercial pricing applied to its outputs, which are made freely available to the geoscience research community. EarthCube is headquartered in the United States with key personnel at UC San Diego and serves academic geoscientists, data scientists, and early-career researchers across institutions globally.

The platform's core technology stack centers on data interoperability and reproducibility. GeoCODES is a prototype data discovery portal that enables search across multiple EarthCube-related geoscience repositories, while DeCODER extends this framework using science-on-schema standards (schema.org, JSON-LD, RDFa) to standardize data descriptions across earth surface, ecological forecasting, and deep ocean observing communities. Supporting infrastructure includes a peer-reviewed Jupyter Notebook Directory (44 notebooks from 2020-2022 meetings, archived on GitHub and Zenodo with DOIs), Science Gateways, and container-based virtual computing environments. EarthCube encompasses 70+ funded sub-projects spanning domains including hydrology, cryospheric science, oceanography, and ecological forecasting—examples include GMTSAR (InSAR processing), Pangeo Forge (big-data climate science), Project Pythia (Python education), QGreenland (Greenland geospatial platform), ICEBERG (ML-based wildlife identification in satellite imagery), and Hydroshare.

EarthCube's go-to-market motion is community-led and event-driven: it operates through working groups, research coordination networks (6 active RCNs), annual meetings, webinars, and participation in major conferences such as AGU Fall Meeting. Distribution is entirely self-serve via the website portal, GeoCODES, GitHub, and Zenodo. The customer/user base is segmented horizontally into geoscientists, data/cyberinfrastructure specialists, and students/early-career researchers, with primary personas being academic and professional earth science researchers who need interoperable data, reproducible workflows, and community-driven collaboration tools aligned with FAIR data principles.

Name

EarthCube

Legal name

EarthCube

Website

https://earthcube.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2013

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

EarthCube is an NSF-funded community-driven cyberinfrastructure initiative serving the geosciences research community. It provides data discovery tools (GeoCODES, DeCODER), 70+ funded science projects, and a peer-reviewed Jupyter notebook library to enable interoperable, reproducible earth science research.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Geoscience Research Cyberinfrastructure

NAICS

Web Search Portals and All Other Information Services (51929), Computer Systems Design and Related Services (5415)

SIC

Services-Commercial Physical & Biological Research (8731), Services-Computer Integrated Systems Design (7373)

akta.pro primary industry

Earth Science & Geoscience Programs (EDAMABAI)

akta.pro secondary industries

Dataset Discovery, Marketplaces & Licensing (HDAAALAE), Open-Source & Self-Hosted LMS (EDAFAAAL), Standards, Packaging & Interoperability Tools (SCORM/xAPI/cmi5/LTI) (EDAFAHAH)

Keywords

• Geoscience cyberinfrastructure
• Scientific data discovery
• FAIR data platforms
• Geoscience research tools
• Data interoperability standards

Headquarters

HQ city

Boulder

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations

Revenue model

1. NSF Grant Funding: EarthCube is primarily funded through National Science Foundation grants. The NSF Directorate for Geosciences (GEO) and Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) provide core funding. Grant numbers referenced include 1928208 and 2209863.

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels7 records

Core offering

EarthCube builds and operates open-source cyberinfrastructure software for the geosciences research community. Its core products include GeoCODES (a search/discovery portal for geoscience datasets and other online resources), DeCODER (a tool that uses the science-on-schema.org framework to transform data into schema.org JSON-LD), and a Notebook Directory aggregating Jupyter notebooks. Funded by multiple U.S. National Science Foundation grants, the platform is provided free of charge to academic and scientific users to accelerate FAIR data practices across partner projects such as CHORDS, CliMA, CZNet, HydroGEN, LTER, NSF Unidata, OpenTopo, and Wicked Easy.

Product overview

EarthCube is a community-driven platform for geoscience research cyberinfrastructure, consisting of a portfolio of interconnected products. The core offerings include GeoCODES (a data discovery portal) and DeCODER (standardization framework using science-on-schema), which work together to improve data findability and interoperability across geoscience repositories. Supporting products include a Notebook Directory with 44 peer-reviewed Jupyter notebooks (2020-2022), Notebook Training Modules for community education, Software Citation guidelines, and a Science on Schema project. EarthCube also encompasses over 80 funded science projects including GMTSAR, ICEBERG, Pangeo Forge, Project Jupyter, Project Pythia, QGreenland, Hydroshare, Harmonized Earth, and Argovis 2.0, addressing domains from cryospheric science to ecological forecasting. The ecosystem is supported by FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data principles, community webinars, and research coordination networks.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• GeoCODES: A portal for searching data across EarthCube-related repositories.
• DeCODER
• Project Pythia
• Jupyter Meets the Earth

Products and services

• GeoCODES GeoCODES is EarthCube's data and resource search portal that enables geoscience researchers to discover datasets and online resources across partner projects and external repositories. It is intended for use by NSF-funded researchers, data managers, and geoscientists needing to locate and cite partner-project or community datasets.
• DeCODER DeCODER is a tool that uses the science-on-schema.org framework (schema.org JSON-LD) to transform raw, heterogeneous geoscience data into standardized, machine-readable form. It is intended for data managers, cyberinfrastructure developers, and researchers who need to make legacy datasets FAIR-compliant and interoperable.
• EarthCube Notebook Directory The EarthCube Notebook Directory is an aggregated catalog that pulls Jupyter notebooks from GitHub across the geosciences community, providing a single entry point for reproducible computational workflows. It is intended for researchers, students, and educators looking for examples of geospatial and Earth science analyses.
• Science-on-Schema.org Framework Science-on-schema.org is an open semantic framework that extends schema.org JSON-LD for geoscience data. It underpins tools like DeCODER and provides a community standard for describing and exchanging Earth-science datasets in a machine-readable, FAIR-compliant way.

Quantifiable outcome

• 44 peer-reviewed Jupyter notebooks produced from 2020-2022 annual meetings
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers4 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration4 records

AI capability8 records

Feature6 records

Partnerships

Five partnerships are on record, tiered core, major and minor.

• ESIP (Environmental Science Information Partners)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerDeCODER partners with ESIP on adoption of science-on-schema standards across geoscience data centers, building search aggregators and centralized indexes for data discovery.
• Council of Data FacilitiescoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerPartnership with the Council of Data Facilities (CDF) for adoption of data standards and building federated data infrastructure across geoscience domains.
• AGU (American Geophysical Union)majorStrategic or Co-development PartnerEarthCube holds annual meetings and town halls in conjunction with AGU conferences. The AGU Conference Center in Washington DC hosted the EarthCube Retrospective Meeting in November 2022.
• UC San DiegocoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerUC San Diego Library Digital Collections hosts EarthCube organizational materials. Key personnel including Lynne Schreiber are based at UC San Diego.
• GoFAIRminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerGoFAIR experts participate in EarthCube webinars on FAIR metadata and vocabularies, contributing to community capacity building around FAIR data principles.

Scale indicators6 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• Pangeo: An open community for scalable big-data geoscience, also funded by NSF and part of the EarthCube ecosystem (Pangeo Forge). Directly comparable because it offers cloud-based Jupyter + Xarray tooling for the same geoscience research audience.
• HydroShare: A collaborative hydrology data and model sharing platform, itself an EarthCube-funded project. Directly comparable as a domain-specific geoscience data repository with similar FAIR principles and academic user base.
• DataONE: Data Observation Network for Earth, an NSF-funded federation of earth and environmental data repositories. Comparable because it provides data discovery, metadata standards, and interoperability tooling for the same researcher community.
• ESIP Federation: Federation of Earth Science Information Partners, an open community advancing earth science data. Highly comparable: it is a strategic EarthCube partner and overlaps on FAIR data, community coordination, and webinars for earth science data practitioners.

Broad incumbents

• Esri ArcGIS Online: The dominant commercial GIS and geospatial data platform. Comparable because it serves many of the same geoscience mapping and spatial-data users that EarthCube targets, though as a much broader commercial offering.
• Google Earth Engine: A commercial-scale geospatial analysis platform with petabytes of earth observation imagery. Comparable in offering cloud-based geospatial analytics for geoscience and environmental researchers, though it is a much broader commercial incumbent.

Regional players

• CUAHSI: Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. Comparable as a US-based academic consortium providing data services and cyberinfrastructure to hydrology researchers — an adjacent domain EarthCube also serves.

Emerging players

• Research Data Alliance (RDA): An international community developing research data sharing and interoperability standards. Comparable because it works on cross-domain metadata standards and reproducibility, overlapping with EarthCube's science-on-schema and FAIR agenda.
• ICEBERG (NSF): Imagery Cyberinfrastructure project for ML on satellite imagery. A direct EarthCube-funded peer project applying computer vision to polar wildlife counting; comparable as a research-grade cyberinfrastructure initiative with overlapping community.

Others

• Zenodo (CERN): An open research data repository hosted by CERN. EarthCube already archives its peer-reviewed notebooks on Zenodo for DOIs; comparable as a publishing-and-citation platform for open research outputs.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/EarthCube
• YouTubeyoutube.com/user/EarthCubeNSF
• Facebookfacebook.com/NSFearthcube
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/nsfearthcube

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about EarthCube