Argentina-based earth imaging company Satellogic secured $50 million in its latest funding round in December 2019 from new and existing investors. Around 40 percent of the round came from existing investors, including China-based Tencent and Brazil’s Pitanga Fund. Other funding in the round came from several new financial and strategic investors, including the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), through IDB Lab, the innovation laboratory of the IDB Group.
“At IDB Lab, our mission is to leverage innovation towards inclusion in Latin American and the Caribbean,” said Tomás Lopes Teixeira, Senior Investment Officer at IDB Lab. “We’re excited to support Satellogic’s mission of democratizing access to geospatial analytics solutions, such as monitoring crop growth and preventing the spread of plagues in agriculture to help increase yields and livelihoods of a vast universe of small and medium-sized farmers caught in a low-productivity cycle in the region; improving the reaction time and accuracy in natural disaster response, which typically disproportionately impacts vulnerable populations; and preventing deforestation.” IDB Lab’s financing will be specifically directed towards Satellogic’s development of user-end satellite imagery solutions in these sectors.
In September, Satellogic closed a $38 million agreement with China’s ABDAS for dedicated access to a dedicated satellite constellation along with geospatial analytics to provide them with multispectral imagery for monthly remapping of sites they define within Henan Province, China, providing the company with cash flow along with the recent funding round to build and launch more satellites.
About this time last year, Satellogic signed a contract with China GWIC to launch 90 of its spacecraft and had raised over $78 million. The company currently operates 6 imaging satellites with many more expected to go up in 2020. According to Gunther’s Space Page, two more of the company’s NuSat satellites will be launched in January 2020 onboard a Chinese vehicle, followed by another satellite onboard a Vega rideshare launch from French Guyana. Thirteen satellites will go up on a dedicated Long March 6 rocket in 2020, followed by 77 satellites launched by the end of 2020 on a mix of different Long March vehicles.
