Cesium ion 3D Geospatial Platform

Cesium began in 2011 as a virtual globe project at Analytical Graphics, was released as open source in 2012 and spun out as an independent company in 2019. Based in Philadelphia and now working alongside Bentley Systems, it provides the open platform behind thousands of 3D geospatial applications, solving the difficulty of streaming massive 3D city, terrain and reality capture data to any device.

Cesium ion is a SaaS platform that tiles uploaded point clouds, photogrammetry, BIM/CAD models, buildings, imagery and terrain into the open 3D Tiles format, hosts them securely and streams them to CesiumJS, Unreal Engine, Unity, NVIDIA Omniverse and O3DE. Users combine their data with curated global content such as Cesium World Terrain, Cesium OSM Buildings and Google and Bing imagery, and share results through Cesium Stories or the REST API. Customers include developers, engineering firms, governments and defence agencies.

• 3D tiling: Converts point clouds, photogrammetry, BIM/CAD and imagery into streamable 3D Tiles.
• Curated global content: Provides Cesium World Terrain, OSM Buildings and Google and Bing imagery.
• Secure hosting: Stores and streams massive 3D datasets to any device.
• Engine plugins: Connects to CesiumJS, Unreal, Unity, Omniverse and O3DE.
• Cesium Stories: Builds interactive map-based presentations without code.
• ion MCP Server: Lets AI assistants and coding agents query and use 3D assets.

A Vietnamese GIS integrator can build a city digital twin portal that streams drone photogrammetry and BIM of public buildings. A real estate developer can show projects in 3D context using Unreal Engine. A transport consultant can visualise highway alignments over terrain for public consultation.

Teams avoid building their own 3D tiling and streaming pipeline and can serve massive datasets to web, game engine and simulation clients. Open standards such as 3D Tiles and glTF prevent vendor lock-in. A free Community plan supports evaluation, with Commercial plans from USD 149 per month and a self-hosted option for enterprises with data residency needs.

Urban digital twins, reality capture by drones and laser scanning, and game-engine visualisation are converging around open 3D formats. Southeast Asian governments and developers building smart city and infrastructure twins need scalable streaming layers that integrate with GIS, BIM and simulation tools.

Origin at Analytical Graphics in 2011; open source since 2012; independent company since 2019. Bentley Systems now lists Cesium among its group businesses, and founder Patrick Cozzi is Bentley's Chief Platform Officer; a shared Philadelphia office opened in September 2026. Works with US government agencies and the Department of Defense.