Skytree Scientific harnessing AI to tackle global lightning risk
When entrepreneur Christopher Bean looked at how organisations were managing the risk of lightning strikes, he saw a gaping problem. Despite the massive financial and safety risks posed by lightning such as outages, infrastructure damage and costly delays the tools and processes most commonly used to assess and mitigate those risks were outdated, slow, and heavily manual. With climate change fuelling more severe storms and a world increasingly reliant on uninterrupted infrastructure, Bean believed there had to be a better way.
That belief became the seed for Skytree Scientific, the company he went on to co-found in 2024 with Thomas Tay, James Grasty, and Jerri Lynn Reeves. Operating between Auckland and Asheville, North Carolina, the team shares both entrepreneurial ambition and deep technical expertise. “We started Skytree because we realised the industry was still relying on methods developed decades ago,” Bean explained. “The risks have changed, the data has changed, but the tools hadn’t kept pace. We knew we could do better.”
For Bean, the journey into entrepreneurship has been shaped by years of experience in lightning protection and infrastructure resilience. He had seen first-hand the frustration of engineers and operators forced to make critical safety decisions with limited data and time-consuming calculations. This pain point resonated strongly with his co-founders. Tay, who leads customer engagement and market development, recognised the gap as a commercial opportunity. Grasty, with a background in clean energy and strategy, understood the wider implications for climate resilience. Reeves, bringing deep technology leadership as CTO, knew that AI and cloud software could unlock the solution. The combination of these perspectives gave Skytree its founding edge.
The product they built, LRA Plus™, reflects both the urgency of the problem and the precision of their approach. It takes what used to be a multi-day or even multi-week process of calculating lightning risks and compresses it into hours or minutes. By integrating real-time lightning data and advanced analytics, the platform gives engineers actionable insights rather than leaving them to wrestle with guesswork. As Bean put it, “What used to take a week or more can now be done in a matter of hours. That speed isn’t just convenient—it’s critical when you’re making safety decisions about major infrastructure.”
Compliance was another area where the founders saw opportunity. Lightning protection must meet international standards, yet manual checks are tedious and error-prone. LRA Plus™ automates compliance with standards such as IEC 62305 and NFPA 780-2023 Annex L, reducing delays and liability. “From day one, we built compliance into the system,” said Bean. “We wanted engineers to trust that when they use our platform, they’re getting results that stand up to the highest level of scrutiny.”
Like many startups, Skytree’s journey has also been about balancing vision with pragmatism. The team understood that not every customer would be ready to adopt a purely software-based solution, so they surrounded their platform with professional services: training, consultancy, and vetted partners who can carry out full lightning risk assessments. This dual approach reflects an entrepreneurial instinct to meet the market where it is, while steadily nudging it toward a more data-driven, technology-enabled future.
Building a company across two continents has added to the challenge, but also to the opportunity. “Running a startup between New Zealand and the US isn’t easy,” Bean admitted. “But it forces us to think globally from the start. Lightning isn’t just a local problem—it’s a universal one.” That international mindset has already opened doors, giving Skytree a broader perspective on both customers and investors.
Since launch, Skytree has gained traction with industries where downtime and damage from lightning can cost millions: energy providers, insurers, government agencies, and critical infrastructure operators. Early attention from climate tech investors has reinforced the founders’ conviction that they are addressing not just a technical challenge but a systemic one. With early access to LRA Plus™ rolling out, the company is now moving from vision into execution. “This is about giving people the confidence to make decisions faster and with better information,” Bean said. “We don’t just want to improve the process—we want to raise the standard for the entire industry.”
For Bean and his co-founders, entrepreneurship is as much about values as it is about technology. They emphasise transparency, scientific integrity, and continuous improvement—not just as talking points, but as principles that guide product development and customer relationships. In Bean’s words, “If people don’t trust the science behind what we’re doing, then nothing else matters. That’s why transparency and rigour are at the heart of everything we build.”
Looking ahead, Bean is motivated by the impact Skytree can have beyond individual projects. “Our goal isn’t just to help a single engineer run a faster calculation,” he said. “It’s to change the way industries think about lightning risk altogether. If we can make resilience easier and more accessible, then we’ve done something that really matters.”
Skytree Scientific’s story is still young, but it captures something essential about entrepreneurship in the climate era. It is about spotting problems that others accept as unavoidable, assembling the right team with complementary skills, and pushing a vision forward even when the challenge is immense. By bringing AI and real-time data into lightning risk management, Bean and his team are not only modernising an old industry but also showing how entrepreneurial drive can light the way toward a safer, more resilient future.
Story by Richard Liew
Innovation Nation is a series celebrating stories of innovation and diversity in entrepreneurship from around New Zealand.
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