A satellite image taken at night on Nov. 14, 2022, of NASA’s Artemis I mission prior to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
capella space
San Francisco-based satellite imagery specialist Capella Space raised $60 million in fresh capital, the company announced Tuesday.
Capella raised equity from the US Innovative Technology Fund, a recently established private investment vehicle of billionaire Thomas Tull. The investor is best known for his work in the film industry, having started Legendary Entertainment, the production studio behind blockbuster films such as “Dune” and “The Dark Knight.”
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Capella is the fund’s first space investment, Tull told CNBC.
“It’s a combination of the best available imaging that we know of … and other data tools” for analysis, Tull said. “If you’re going to take a lot of images from space, you better be able to To sort through them.”
The latest raise brings Capella to $250 million in total equity and debt funding since its 2016 founding. The company declined to disclose its valuation after raising the fresh funds.
“I’ve never celebrated any fundraising – it was always something that needed to happen in order for us to do other important things – and it’s similar but as you know, the market is crazy. So I seems to validate all the good things that we’re doing, when [we] Thomas,” Capella founder and CEO Payam Banzadeh told CNBC.
This video shows the reflector deployment of the Capella-3 satellite, using its boom as a “selfie stick”. The reflector is folded and compact as it reaches into space and expands to an object 3.5 meters in diameter.
capella space
Capella’s business is focused on the satellite imagery market, with its satellites using a special technology called Synthetic Aperture Radar, or SAR. The advantage of SAR is its ability to capture images at any time, even at night or through cloud cover – which is often a stumbling block for conventional optical satellite technology.
The company has grown its workforce to more than 200 people — nearly doubling in size last year — and currently has seven satellites in orbit. While Banzadeh declined to specify how many more satellites Capella plans to deploy into orbit, he said, “we have quite a few” of the next-generation Acadia satellites to launch this year.
“There’s more demand than supply, and that’s a good problem to have,” Banzadeh said.
The company doubled the amount of imagery it collected year-over-year, but revenue growth remains Banzadeh’s “northern star.”
“We are extremely focused on driving market adoption, and so revenue is the metric we use…we had exceptional growth in 2022…and we expect similar growth in ’23 ,” They said
Capella also brings in a trio of executives: Chad Cohen joins as Chief Financial Officer adaptive biotechnology, Technical consultant Glenn Elliott came on as chief human resources officer; and Paul Stephen, formerly Zillow GroupJoined as Chief Information Security Officer.