Albedo, the first company to offer aerial quality imagery from space – enabled by the new orbit frontier of VLEO, announced a $35M Series A-1 financing round led by Standard Investments, bringing the company’s total funding to $97M.
Participation in the round included new investors Booz Allen Ventures, Cubit Capital, and Bill Perkins, along with existing investors Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Shield Capital, Initialized Capital, Y Combinator, Giant Step Capital, Republic Capital, and other undisclosed participants. In addition, Ben Sampson, Managing Director of Standard Investments, will join the Albedo Board of Directors.
“The Series A-1 funding will be used to launch Albedo’s first operational satellite and accelerate constellation deployment ultimately proving out and proliferating the world’s first high-res VLEO platform,” said Topher Haddad, CEO of Albedo.
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Albedo’s mission is to provide commercial and defense users with ultra-high resolution satellite imagery to see details with clarity and then act with certainty. By rethinking the traditional approach to earth observation satellites, namely developing a stable, agile platform to operate at very low altitudes, Albedo is able to collect data at an exquisite quality with cost-effective, mid-sized satellites. The constellation under development will co-collect native 10 centimeter (cm) optical imagery and 2 meter thermal infrared imagery, the same resolutions that can only be obtained today by drones/planes, but now at a global scale with on-demand coverage at high frequency.
“Standard invests in disruptive industrial technologies, and the new orbit frontier of VLEO will open up a wide variety of exciting opportunities around enhanced imagery and data collection, which is a key unmet challenge in modernizing industry and infrastructure,” said Ben Sampson, Managing Director of Standard Investments. “We’re proud to partner with Albedo on their mission to scale aerial-quality data collection from space.”
“We were fortunate to raise this round at a step-up valuation from some of the top investors in our category,” said Haddad. “As geopolitical tensions rise and we approach an irreversible climate change tipping point, the need for innovative dual-use technologies is crucial in sustaining a safe global environment.”
SOURCE : BusinessWire