AccuWeather acquired its air-quality data partner Plume Labs

Plume Labs turned worldwide pollution-sensor data into a consumer forecast app, a home air-quality tracker and an air-quality API.

Air quality would become a metric every industry tracks, making Plume's aggregated pollution data worth more inside a global weather company than on its own.

Romain Lacombe and David Lissmyr founded Plume Labs in Paris in 2014 to make air-quality information accessible to everyone. The first product was a city-level pollution forecast app that aggregated public data sources; machine learning later extended predictions days ahead and down to street level.

Plume added a second-generation Bluetooth air tracker measuring particulate matter (PM1, PM2.5, PM10) and polluting gases — more Plume devices were in use than government-supported monitoring stations — and an API aggregating thousands of environmental monitoring stations for developers. In January 2020 AccuWeather integrated Plume's data into its forecasts and took an equity stake.

AccuWeather acquired the remaining stake in Plume Labs, announced January 24, 2022, terms undisclosed. Plume becomes AccuWeather's center for climate and environmental data, with the team continuing and expanding to environmental risks such as wildfires.

Plume had proven demand beyond consumers: its sensors outnumbered government monitoring stations and its API aggregated thousands of data sources.

AccuWeather had already validated the data in its own products for two years, making the acquisition a low-risk vertical integration.

Air pollution was becoming a key metric for many industries, and AccuWeather wanted to own climate and environmental data, not rent it.

A data-supplier alliance with a bigger platform is a courtship: integrate first, take a stake, then buy. Plume's two-year partnership with AccuWeather ended in a tidy exit.

As of the January 24, 2022 announcement, Plume Labs was becoming the center for climate and environmental data inside AccuWeather. Smith said air quality 'plays an intrinsic role' in the company's mission and promised a '360-degree understanding of the impact of weather on their wellness'. Lacombe framed the exit as a way to 'amplify our impact at planetary scale and help 1.5 billion people avoid air pollution'. The team and technology were to continue operating and expand to other environmental risks such as wildfires; AccuWeather called climate risk forecasting still in its early days.