Argentinian commercial Earth observation company Satellogic announced on 19 December 2019 that it has raised U.S.$50 million in at least its second investment round. The latest investment will allow the company to build out more of its planned constellation of a total 90 satellites.
Existing Satellogic investors Tencent, of China, and Pitanga, of Brazil, contributed 40 percent of the funds, while 60 percent of the funds came from new investors that include IDB Lab, an innovation laboratory at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
In a statement, IDB Lab’s Tomás Lopes Teixeira said, “At IDB Lab, our mission is to leverage innovation towards inclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean. We’re excited to support Satellogic’s mission of democratizing access to geospatial analytics solutions.”
“This funding, for us, is a way for us to continue to build on our momentum,” said Emiliano Kargieman, CEO of Satellogic speaking to Space News. “We’re going to use the proceeds to fund more technology development and product development, but also to scale up our constellation of satellites a little quicker.”
Satellogic has eight satellites already in orbit, and plans to launch 16 more satellites in 2020 from China. The first two of these 16 satellites are expected to be launched in January 2020. The latest investment round should enable Satellogic to potentially expedite this. “We’re looking at opportunities to see if we can speed up our rollout,” Kargieman said.
The Satellogic constellation of 90 Earth observation satellites aims to provide up to 70 centimeter resolution satellite imagery of any location on Earth that can be updated weekly. The U.S.$50 million investment not only allows Satellogic to increase the production and launch rate of new satellites, but also enables it to increase downlink capacity and improve its on-orbit data processing capability.
“With the backlog and pipeline that we currently have, and this funding, we can start scaling up our constellation of satellites and work on technology development and still be in a position to keep the company profitable and growing,” Kargieman told Space News.
