Kuva House, a hyperspectral imaging startup based in Finland, has closed a €16.6 million ($17.6 million) Sequence A funding spherical because it seems to deploy as much as 100 satellites by the tip of the last decade.
The startup, previously known as Reaktor House Lab, was based in 2016 and spent its first 4 years specializing in constructing nanosatellites for firms together with the European House Company. It has efficiently launched three satellites thus far, together with a cubesat that contained a small hyperspectral digital camera demonstrator. It wasn’t till round 2020 that the corporate determined to pursue a hyperspectral constellation, with Kuva closing a €4.2 million ($4.85 million) seed spherical in October 2021 to get began.
“Constructing nanosatellites for different folks will not be probably the most enjoyable factor on the planet,” Jarkko Antila, CEO of Kuva House, stated in a current interview. “We have all the time checked out these totally different choices to offer digital companies, possibly by means of telecom or additionally by means of hyperspectral.”
Hyperspectral imaging can learn the ‘spectral signature’ of supplies on Earth, that means it may be used to establish crops, minerals and even fuel. There’s a demand for this sort of data from industries starting from agriculture to grease and fuel to protection.
Kuva says the bottom pixel dimension of its constellation would be the smallest amongst its rivals as a result of it makes use of a 2D imaging system that stitches collectively photographs from totally different bands utilizing software program. (The aim is to launch two business microsatellites subsequent 12 months.) The corporate can even choose which of the bands it needs its satellites to measure, a vital method to get higher outcomes for purchasers, Antila stated.
“As a substitute of measuring 250 bands, you possibly can have 25 and you’ll take ten occasions extra pictures from the very same spot,” he defined. “This lets you enhance the signal-to-noise ratio, which is the crucial technical parameter in hyperspectral, whether or not your information is significant or not.”
Kuva plans to supply prospects insights through subscription, with immediately accessible information that doesn’t require the client to cost a satellite tv for pc upfront. The startup’s aim is to attain a better than weekly repeat charge with a constellation of six satellites launched over the subsequent two years. The corporate plans to scale to raised than day by day revisits for a lot of components of the world by 2026, and goals to scale to 100 satellites in orbit by 2030.
“We need to deliver a real SaaS mannequin to the Earth statement sector,” he stated.
The startup, which has received contracts from the European Fee and received the NATO Innovation Problem, goals to create a U.S. entity to create alternatives to collaborate with the U.S. Division of Protection and different U.S. organizations. A few of these organizations, such because the US Nationwide Reconnaissance Workplace, have expressed curiosity in such information. The corporate at the moment has 20 staff, however plans to triple its staff within the coming months
The spherical was led by present buyers Voima Ventures and Nordic Foodtech VC, with participation from Singaporean fund Earth VC. The spherical additionally included capital from Finnish non-public buyers by means of a Finnish development fund known as Springvest and non-equity financing from Enterprise Finland.
