CARTO develops a cloud-native Location Intelligence platform that integrates directly with data warehouses, allowing organizations to analyse, visualize, and work with large-scale spatial data without complex data pipelines or isolated systems. Founded in 2012 by Javier and Sergio in Madrid whilst working on conservation projects, the company emerged from frustration with existing Geographic Information Systems tools and has since expanded to serve hundreds of thousands of users across insurance, telecommunications, financial services, and environmental sectors.
The platform supports a range of technical disciplines - spatial analysis, GIS expertise, and geospatial visualization - and is built on cloud-native architecture with deep integration of open-source technologies, particularly PostGIS. CARTO employs over 160 spatial analysis and GIS specialists across offices in New York, Madrid, and Seville, serving data analysts, GIS professionals, developers, and business leaders who need to extract value from location data at scale.
The company's focus centres on reducing the friction of working with spatial data: eliminating data silos, removing unnecessary extract-transform-load processes, and making location intelligence accessible to users across technical and non-technical backgrounds. This approach has positioned CARTO as a solution to location-data challenges that span multiple industries, enabling organizations to perform sophisticated spatial analysis within their existing data warehouse environments.
