DTN

DTN (formerly Data Transmission Network) is a private company based in Bloomington, Minnesota that delivers subscription-based real-time weather, agricultural, energy, and commodity market information to industry customers^[2]. Its website organizes offerings around refined fuels, agriculture, and precision weather for sectors including aviation, marine and offshore, mining, transportation and logistics, utilities and renewable energy, and outdoor safety^[1].

Founded in 1984 in Omaha, Nebraska as a subsidiary of grain company Scoular, the company has been owned since 2017 by Zurich-based investment holding TBG AG, which purchased it from Schneider Electric for about 900 million dollars^[2]. As of 2018 it reported roughly 600,000 subscribers, mostly in the United States^[2].

What It Does

DTN collects and analyzes weather, market, and operational data and sells decision-support products to businesses whose operations are sensitive to those conditions^[1][2]. Its positioning emphasizes "decision-grade" data, vertical hubs tailored to sector workflows, and operational AI^[1].

The company operates 24/7 weather operations and exposes its data through APIs and data feeds via a developer portal^[1].

Data And Methodology

Weather forecasts combine proprietary observations from DTN's large network of member-operated weather stations with other global sources, blended using the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Dynamic Integrated foreCast (DICast) technology licensed from UCAR; the company employs more than 120 professional meteorologists^[2]. According to ForecastWatch analyses cited by Wikipedia, DTN's forecasts ranked most accurate in the United States each year since 2006 for short-term precipitation and high temperatures^[2].

In agriculture, DTN provides hyper-local weather, field-level agronomic insights, and grain market prices; its Farm Market iD acquisition added aggregated farm and grower data^[1][2].

Products

Product families include the Ag Hub (Farm Intelligence, Grain Intelligence, Grain Discovery), agribusiness tools such as EcoField data, AgTarget, ClearAg, FarmMarket data, Grain Portal, MyDTN, and ProphetX; fuel operations tools including Fuel Buyer, Fuel Seller, FastRacks, TABS, TIMS, Guardian3, Energy Digital Commerce, Instant Market, and IQFeed; and weather platforms such as WeatherSentry editions, AviationSentry, MetConsole, WeatherOps, Opticast, Frontier Weather, ClearPath Weather, RoadCast, and Risk Communicator^[1].

Recent platform launches highlighted on the site include the DTN Fuel Operations Hub, DTN Ag Hub for agribusiness, DTN Weather Hub for Utilities, and DTN Weather Hub for Outdoor Safety^[1].

Buyers And Use Cases

Customers span fuel distributors and terminal operators, farmers and agribusinesses, airlines and airports, utilities, mining operators, road maintenance agencies, sports and event organizers, and commodity traders^[1]. In aviation, DTN supplies turbulence, icing, and thunderstorm weather intelligence directly or indirectly to over 250 airlines worldwide, according to its Wikipedia profile^[2].

Since 2007 DTN has owned The Progressive Farmer, an agricultural magazine founded in 1886 with circulation of roughly half a million^[2].

History

The company began in 1984 as Scoular Information Services, a subsidiary of Omaha grain firm Scoular created to communicate with farmers, later known as Dataline; subscribers received FM and satellite broadcasts of market and weather information on leased terminals^[2]. It was renamed Data Transmission Network in September 1987 and grew through the late 1980s and 1990s, acquiring competitor FarmDayta in 1996 and merging weather units into DTN/Meteorlogix^[2].

After a late-1990s downturn and Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2003, DTN was sold to private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson in 2000, revived under CEO Robert Gordon from 2004, then acquired by Spain's Telvent in 2008 for 445 million dollars and passed to Schneider Electric with its 2011 purchase of Telvent^[2]. TBG AG completed its 900-million-dollar acquisition in April 2017^[2].

Under TBG, DTN acquired Wilkens Weather (2017), Spensa Technologies (2018), Energy Management Institute (2018), Weather Decision Technologies (2018), PraxSoft (2019), Australia's Weatherzone (2019), Iteris's ClearAg and ClearPath (2020), Farm Market iD (2021), and Online Fuels (2021); TBG's MeteoGroup was also integrated into DTN^[2].