AUSTIN, Texas, Aug. 11, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — 4M today issued a position statement by CEO and Co-Founder Itzik Malka marking 8/11 Day, where infrastructure stakeholders remind all those that plan to dig to call 811, wait the required time, and excavate carefully around marked underground utility facilities.. Read the statement in full: A Utility Strike Is Not an Accident.
Malka states, “A utility strike is not an accident. It is almost always the predictable outcome of making critical decisions without accurate knowledge of what lies underground.” According to Malka, true damage prevention begins the moment a project enters scope, not after a locate ticket is called in. But the tools to enable this broader strategy have been sorely missing for decades.
4M Map of Los Angeles Oil Spill Site. More than 2,400 gallons of crude oil spilled in Los Angeles in May 2026 due to a fiber optic installation crew puncturing a 16″ pipeline—and the data was there to prevent it, corroborated by PHMSA sources.
After a year with 213,985 unique utility strikes and several deaths and home explosions caused by strikes on unmarked or mismarked lines, Malka examines: why utility records remain incomplete and inaccurate for the 50 million miles of buried infrastructure across the US; why no single industry organization is positioned to compile and correct records at national scale; and how 4M is building the first nationwide map to solve that gap.
4M is America’s Subsurface Model: a live map of infrastructure above and beneath the ground, across the entire US, with AI-powered visual reasoning to solve record gaps and errors. 4M is on track to map all 50 states by the end of 2026. Their deterministic AI generates lines for utilities that were never documented and corrects record errors that were never fixed, using visual facility evidence and indicators of underground utilities from street and aerial imagery, road marks, network topology, and engineering logic. Utility data streams into the CAD and GIS platforms that engineering teams already use, and organizations can build their own AI workflows on top of reliable, comprehensive, and up-to-date data to build, operate and maintain their systems with evidence-backed confidence.
4M Map of Durham Natural Gas Leak Site. Yellow roadmarks detected outside of Durham Bulls Athletic Park in North Carolina, where a large natural gas leak occurred after a third party damaged the gas line in July 2026.
About 4M
4M is the utility data platform for infrastructure intelligence. Powered by proprietary data and AI, verified by geospatial experts, 4M delivers instant, reliable utility intelligence you can trust, validate, and access across teams, technologies, and workflows. Trusted by WSP, Stantec, AtkinsRéalis, HNTB, MasTec, TxDOT, GDOT, Michigan DOT, MnDOT, and CDOT, 4M enables teams to identify risks earlier, keep crews safer, and deliver projects on time and on budget. Founded in 2019, 4M is backed by Insight Partners, Viola Ventures, and Waze’s former CEO. Learn more at www.4manalytics.com.
Contact Info:
Tamar Shafrir
tamar@4m-a.com
360-840-3411
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Photos accompanying this announcement are available at
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