ICEYE, a SAR data provider, today announced the closing of a larger than planned for $87M Series C funding, led by the return investor True Ventures, with a substantial investment contribution from OTB Ventures. ICEYE has so far successfully launched 5 satellite missions, starting with the first ever small SAR satellite launched in January 2018. The company is launching 4 additional SAR satellites still this year and is on course to launch an additional 8 in 2021. This will grow the existing operational constellation into a capability that is unique in the World. To date, ICEYE has raised a total of $152M in financing.
“ICEYE has built a reputation of delivering on its promises for timelines and quality, while continually developing technologies that others have not been able to execute. We are very proud of that reputation, and we will continue to do our best to maintain it,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and Co-founder of ICEYE. “This round of investment ensures our SAR satellite constellation size continues to grow during the 2021 schedule as planned.”
ICEYE designs, manufactures and operates its SAR satellites in-house, with manufacturing timelines brought down to months for its spacecraft. Since the January 2018 launch of the first operational ICEYE SAR satellite, the company has been consistently delivering SAR imaging services and new capabilities to global customers, including many ‘world firsts’ from small SAR satellites, such as 0.25 meter resolution data and SAR video.
ICEYE intends to use this financing round to accelerate the size of its SAR satellite constellation in the coming years, increasing data availability for all continents through 24/7 customer operations, continuing development of ground-breaking radar imaging capabilities and for establishing spacecraft manufacturing in the US. This significantly larger than originally planned for financing round during the economically turbulent year of 2020 is a powerful sign of trust from the financial community that ICEYE’s business and operational model works and continues to deliver results.
Given the unprecedented frequency and scale of climate driven changes in the weather, crop patterns, fires, urban living and human activities, there is a growing need for real-time information access on a global scale. This access can be used for humanitarian and disaster response, towards saving lives, in addition to being utilized for economic decision making during moments of crisis.
ICEYE has provided commercial radar satellite imaging worldwide for data users starting from 2018, for ICEYE’s customers to respond to oil spills, hurricanes, deforestation and many more use cases. Along with these active customer imaging operations, the ICEYE SAR satellite constellation has seen an unprecedented development cycle of new imaging capabilities and new spacecraft generations.
Adam Niewiński, co-founder and Managing Partner of OTB Ventures, said:
“We are pleased to be a cornerstone investor in the latest round of venture funding for ICEYE. We are thrilled to be part of the evolving ecosystem where even the sky is no longer the limit.”
ICEYE’s Series C includes participation from return investors True Ventures, OTB Ventures, Luxembourg Future Fund (LFF), Finnish Industry Investment (Tesi), Draper Esprit, DNX, Draper Associates, Seraphim Space, Promus Ventures and Space Angels. The funding round is joined by New Space Capital. The European Investment Bank (EIB) has participated both as advisor to Luxembourg Future Fund and as investor through its financing mechanism InnovFin For Equity (IFE). Further, a significant portion of Tesi’s investment is part of the EFSI investment program set up between Tesi and the European Investment Bank. Coinciding with ICEYE’s Series C funding, OTB Ventures today announced the launch of a dedicated investment vehicle to support Europe’s leading space technologies – OTB Space Program I – backed by the European Investment Fund (EIF).