Bentley Systems acquires 3D geospatial company

Cesium is an open platform for creating 3D geospatial applications

Cesium is an open platform for creating 3D geospatial applications, and its 3D Tiles open standard has been widely adopted by leading enterprises, governments, and tens of thousands of application developers globally. The company’s open-source offerings have more than ten million downloads.

Bentley’s iTwin Platform powers digital twin solutions that are used by engineering and construction firms and owner-operators to design, build, and operate the world’s infrastructure.

The company says that the combination of Cesium plus iTwin enables developers to align 3D geospatial data with engineering, subsurface, IoT, reality, and enterprise data to create digital twins.

Bentley CEO Nicholas Cumins said, “A 3D geospatial view is the most intuitive way for owner-operators and engineering services providers to search for, query, and visualize information about infrastructure networks and assets. With the combined capabilities of Cesium and iTwin, infrastructure professionals can make better informed decisions in full 3D geospatial context—all within a single, highly performant environment.”

Komatsu, one of the world’s biggest OEMs, uses Cesium’s 3D geospatial technology to monitor construction sites globally, track changes over time, compare architectural plans with real-world data, and run precise and near real-time measurements.

“With Cesium as part of Bentley, we can further enrich our Smart Construction digital twins with engineering models, subsurface data, and more, for safer and more efficient construction projects,” said Chikashi Shike, executive officer, Smart Construction Promotion Division, Komatsu.

With the acquisition Patrick Cozzi, CEO of Cesium, was named Bentley’s chief platform officer, leading the development of the combined Cesium and iTwin platform offerings, reporting to Bentley’s CTO, Julien Moutte.

The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.