ICEYE Project Receives USD 34 Million of Funding
Investment in an amount of USD 34 million has been made by numerous interested entities, with regards to the ICEYE company. ICEYE confirmed that more of its satellites would be placed in the orbit by the end of 2019. Dynamic development of the company, that we could have witnessed throughout the last year also made it possible to accelerate the plan, the goal of which is to create a constellation of SAR satellites.
ICEYE company who remains one of the leaders of the Earth Observation sector announced that additional funding has been received, in an amount of USD 34 million provided by the investors. The group of investors is led by the True Ventures fund, hailing from the Silicon Valley. ICEYE plans to use the extra funds for the purpose of investment in development of analytical services pertaining to radar imagery processing. The service would be addressed to the growing customer base. Furthermore, the company is also willing to further accelerate SAR technology for space applications. The funds are going to be used to launch more elements of the constellation and place them in the orbit.
The current group of ICEYE investors: True Ventures, Draper Nexus, Draper Associates, Seraphim Capital and Space Angels Network; now also includes new entities, along with a Polish fund. Up until now ICEYE has accumulated capital in a total amount of USD 53 million. This also involves governmental funding provided by Finland and money provided via the EU Horizon 2020 programme.
We are creating a constellation of satellites with our customers in mind. Thanks to those satellites our clients may access new data, and thanks to the new information, they may make better decisions. Datastream provided by our satellites is helpful for the key decisionmakers and analysts - not only in the public administration, but also in a variety of commercial sectors.
Back in January ICEYE became the first entity in the world that has placed a SAR satellite in the orbit, weighing less than 100 kilograms. Despite the darkness or cloud coverage, usually obscuring the view of 66% of the Earth’s surface, SAR technology provides reliable imagery, even when no conditions exist to carry out observations optically. By delivering EO data both to public administration organs, as well as to commercial entities, ICEYE helps its clients solve issues and problems in a myriad of sectors, including maritime industry, crisis management, insurance, finances, security and intelligence.
After ICEYE-X1 was placed in the orbit in January 2018, ICEYE-X2 satellite is to follow, it is to be placed in the orbit by the end of this year. In total ICEYE wants to launch another 9 satellites into the outer space by the end of 2019.
Starting from the last year, the Polish-Finnish entity has been expanding its business organization in Poland. Satellite Operations Centre and Customer Service Centre have both already been established in Warsaw. Some of the engineering effort is also taking place in Poland. ICEYE plans to expand the research potential of the company in Poland, across a variety of locations.
We remain very committed to development in Poland and making use of the potential and know-how offered by our engineers. We are also interested in collaboration with the Polish academic bodies, when it comes to implementation of projects that bear the key importance for our company