Cesium founder Patrick Cozzi says Bentley Systems is the “best accelerator [among a] myriad of options” for the 3D geospatial software company after he agreed to be acquired by Philadelphia neighbour Bentley for an undisclosed price.
Cozzi said this week Cesium had been consistently cash flow positive and “grown by double digits every year” since it spun out of Analytics Graphics, now part of Ansys, five years ago.
New York Stock Exchange-listed Bentley, which has provided no public deal metrics to its shareholders, said Cesium had a “foundational open platform for creating powerful 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”.
“Cesium ion, the company’s SaaS platform, brings 3D geospatial experiences to more than 1 million active devices every month, while Cesium’s open-source offerings have more than 10 million downloads.”
Bentley, which generates US$1.2-1.3 billion a year revenue from infrastructure and resources engineering software, sees Cesium’s core products as a good strategic fit with its iTwin software.
“The combination of Cesium plus iTwin enables developers to seamlessly align 3D geospatial data with engineering, subsurface, IoT, reality, and enterprise data to create digital twins with astonishing user experiences that scale from vast infrastructure networks to the millimetre-accurate details of individual assets – viewed from land, sky, and sea, from outer space to deep below the Earth’s surface,” Bentley said.
Cozzi said: “I have been frequently asked about the long-term vision for Cesium. From potential colleagues who want to know if we are building to an IPO, to customers and partners who want me to look them in the eye and confirm that we are in it for the long game in terms of supporting an open ecosystem for developers. My answer has remained consistent: we are taking a big swing at building the open platform that empowers developers to build experiences with 3D geospatial data.
“In our DNA, we are committed to open source, open standards, and open APIs as a foundation that the ecosystem can trust to build their experiences and businesses upon. Joining Bentley helps us accelerate this.”
Bentley has made a series of strategic acquisitions in the past four years, adding Power Line Systems, Seequent, SPIDA Software, ADINA, eagle.io and EasyPower. Canadian geospatial news platform GoGeomatics observed: “The acquisition of Cesium … stands out for its unique strategic purpose. While the others add to Bentley’s advanced engineering and geotechnical capabilities to Bentley, Cesium specifically boosts Bentley’s 3D geospatial data and visualisation capabilities, particularly for digital twins and infrastructure projects.
“Recent developments in the geospatial industry highlight a trend toward integrating advanced technologies to elevate infrastructure planning, management, and visualisation. In 2024, Trimble and Esri strengthened their long-standing partnership to enhance construction and infrastructure management, focusing on deeper technology integration and improved GIS workflow efficiency for sustainable planning. Similarly, Esri and Autodesk have collaborated closely to enhance interoperability between their platforms, streamlining workflows for infrastructure projects and enhancing the ability to create comprehensive digital twins, optimise project outcomes, and support sustainable infrastructure development.
“The Bentley-Cesium partnership exemplifies the future direction of the geospatial and infrastructure sectors: greater integration, real-time intelligence, and adherence to open standards.”
Japanese construction and mining equipment major Komatsu is said to use 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.” Komatsu’s Chikashi Shike said this week.
Cozzi, who becomes chief platform officer at Bentley, said: “We met Bentley in 2016. They discovered Cesium through the open source community and saw the potential of 3D Tiles and CesiumJS for massive photogrammetry models generated by ContextCapture – now iTwin Captur – and massive interior and exterior Infrastructure models such as skyscrapers, bridges, and highways from MicroStation.
“Bentley funded key contributions to open source CesiumJS and the 3D Tiles specification and served as part of the team that brought 3D Tiles 1.0 through the OGC Community Standard process.
“Cesium capabilities will now extend to an infrastructure ecosystem representing some of the world’s largest and most significant projects and assets. When thinking from the macro view of outer space or viewing an entire country to the micro view of being inside a building or under the Earth’s surface, bringing iTwin services to the Cesium community gets us there, further and faster.”
