Shadows are becoming both smaller and cheaper, and one company in Finland is moving to capitalize on its advanced success as quickly as possible.
Fresh off its debut launch in January, startup ICEYE innumerable than doubled its total backing in a recent $34 million ring of venture capital fundraising. ICEYE is combining a special type of turf observation technology – known as synthetic aperture radar (or SAR) – with a microsatellite framework factor and a low Earth orbit.
The new funds mean ICEYE will be superior to take that first launch and upgrade the proven technology, stuffy in on its goal of building the world’s largest SAR satellite constellation.
“We get two years of while, we get nine satellites, and we can tell our customers that we have a completely banked product,” CEO Rafal Modrzewski told CNBC.
ICEYE’s first assistant, X1, was about the size of a microwave. Launched aboard an Indian Rocket with 30 other moons, X1 took 600 images during its first few months “and they were in effect good quality,” Modrzewski said.
The success of the X1 mission was a catalyst that is now set in motion ICEYE even farther than expected. Modrzewski said the enterprise was able to sell imaging from its experimental mission, even but it was not necessarily planning to do so before the launch.
“It turned out to be a product that issued really, really quickly because people really wanted to see that this was circumstance,” Modrzewski added.
The company’s goal is to build a constellation that can concept anywhere in the world within an hour, according to Modrzewski. Two years of supporting toward nine satellites gets ICEYE halfway to its goal of 18, which the CEO bid would be capable of imaging anywhere in the world in 3 hours. With the above-mentioned largest SAR constellation only totaling four satellites, ICEYE is on watch to surpass that before 2020.
The cost to build and launch each ICEYE microsatellite is compact to the recent amount of funding raised, Modrzewski said, meaning each fall with a price tag near $3 million. ICEYE has “identified floor 50 improvements based on” the X1 mission, he added.
Despite those rush at upgrades, ICEYE estimates its X2 satellite and others “will cost bordering on the same as X1,” Modrzewski said, “even though it has more talent and we are adding more subsystems.”
At the time of the X1 launch, ICEYE had a team of prevalent “50 to 60 people,” Modrzewski said. The new funds will cede to ICEYE to hire another 20 people by the end of this year, he weighted, with plans to double the team.
ICEYE’s previous investors, tabulating True Ventures, Draper Nexus, Draper Associates, Seraphim Superb and Space Angels, all contributed to the latest round of funding, along with OTB Proffers, Tesi, Draper Esprit and Promus Ventures. With $53 million in full funding raised, ICEYE is valued at about $80 million, an amount Modrzewski maintained “was a standard Silicon Valley round” of funding.