Scale AI Invests $2 Million to Transform Puerto Rico’s Port of Ponce into a Smart Port Lab
A small port in Puerto Rica is transforming into a test lab for trade flexibility
A California-based artificial intelligence company, Scale AI has discovered a peculiarity in the form of two idle ship-to-shore cranes in Puerto Rico’s Port of Ponce.
Shipping ports are projects designed to operate at full capacity with shuffling cranes coming and going from ships to the port around the clock. They are capital-intensive projects. So the thought of curbing the operations for research and development purposes is normally not feasible.
Moreover, the Scale on Thursday will announce the plans to invest $2 million in the coming 12 months to convert a part of the Ponce port into “Smart Port Lab. according to the plan of the researchers, hardware autonomy kits will be built, to integrate into those idle cranes. Digital receipt registries, autonomous inspection systems, and computer-assisted surveillance systems will also be developed by Scale for tracking and monitoring the movement of containers.
As per Michael Kratsios, Scale AI managing director, they have procured the whole country to find a place that has the particular hardware and region to construct it.
Ponce is having great potential. It is the single area in the united states where this can be done.
The information is an impetus for the port of Ponce, situated on the southern coast and serving Puerto Rico’s second city. According to port officials, the cranes were bought by the government in 2009 for a reported $22.7 million, but they are not in operation for at least 5 years.
The installations were also affected by Hurricane Maria in 2017, damaging earthquakes in 2020, and Hurricane Fiona in 2022. Despite handling about 125 bulk cargo ships and a handful of cruises a year, it never greets container ships. And this is in spite of having a container yard with 524,000 spots and three docks having accommodation capacity to accommodate Panamax ships, with a carrying capacity of 4,500 containers.
In a statement, Governor Pedro Pierluisi said that the combination of digital and artificial intelligence will be important for the fabrication of jobs as well as economic development in the south of Puerto Rico.
The Smart Port Lab is setting a paradigm of investment that is gambling on Puerto Rico’s revolutionary business ecosystem as an innovation leader in the Caribbean.
The intent of the new project by Scale AI is to bring to notice what a future smart port can look like to the global port operators from around the world.
Established in 2016, Scale AI is specialized in rendering data infrastructure for artificial intelligence applications.
As per information from a website the company had a valuation of $7.3 billion in 2021. It is supported by the Founders Fund, Accel, and Tiger Global Management.
Hector Agosto, executive director of the Ponce Port Authority had a view that Scale’s involvement will throw a spotlight on the port as it tries to gather business.
