AI-Powered Risk Analysis Firm ResiQuant Secures $4M to Expand Its Platform
ResiQuant has raised $4 million in seed funding to enhance its AI-driven platform aimed at helping property insurers navigate climate and earthquake risk in vulnerable regions.
Elena Whitmore 
ResiQuant, a company specializing in AI-based catastrophe risk analysis for property insurers, has closed a $4 million seed round led by LDV Capital, with participation from Foothill Ventures, Pear VC, Alumni Ventures, and several angel investors. The funding will be used to scale the company's platform and expand its engineering and AI teams. As climate-related disasters and seismic events grow more frequent, the firm aims to support property carriers in improving how they assess risk across the United States.
Engineering-focused analysis at the building level
The platform developed by ResiQuant integrates structural engineering with AI to offer building-level insights, surpassing the limitations of conventional data sets. Its AI agents are trained to analyze photos from site inspections, aerial imagery, and publicly available visuals to assess vulnerabilities that could determine whether a building withstands a disaster. The company emphasizes the need for detailed structural evaluation, especially as insurers make critical exposure and capital allocation decisions.
Dr. Omar Issa, ResiQuant's CEO, commented that “property carriers make billion-dollar exposure and capital allocation decisions with dangerously incomplete data.” According to Dr. Laurie Johnson, a disaster risk expert and advisor to the company, more granular, engineering-driven evaluations are essential to improving underwriting processes and enhancing resilience to future hazards.
Founders with academic and field experience
The company was co-founded by Dr. Omar Issa and Dr. Francisco Galvis, both structural engineers who met at Stanford University's Blume Earthquake Engineering Center in 2020. Dr. Issa conducted earthquake research at UCLA under Professor Henry Burton, while Dr. Galvis focused on forensic engineering in his home country of Colombia, which is also prone to seismic activity.
Their collaboration began during the COVID-19 pandemic, when they were granted special authorization to work together on disaster models at the Blume Center. While Dr. Galvis concentrated on pre-Northridge steel frames in San Francisco, Dr. Issa focused on recovery modeling using machine learning. Their complementary academic backgrounds formed the basis of the platform’s core technology.
Insights shaped by post-disaster inspections
Beyond academic research, both founders have participated in post-disaster assessments, including the 2019 Ridgecrest Earthquake, the 2022 Michoacan Earthquake in Mexico, Hurricane Ian and Hurricane Nicole in 2022, and the 2023 Kahramanmaras Earthquake in Turkiye. These firsthand experiences helped them identify recurring patterns in building failures and informed how their AI system is trained to evaluate risk.
Currently, ResiQuant supports earthquake risk evaluation for single-family, multi-family, and commercial properties. The team plans to extend the platform’s scope to cover additional threats such as wildfires and windstorms, aiming to provide a more comprehensive hazard risk solution for insurers.
Evan Nisselson, founder of LDV Capital, stated that “ResiQuant is developing a platform that utilizes agentic AI and computer vision to transform imagery into actionable, building-level insights.” He added that the insurance sector is on the edge of a major digital transformation.
