Albedo – a company offering aerial quality imagery from space, enabled by the new orbit frontier of VLEO (very low earth orbit) – announced a $35 million Series A-1 financing round led by Standard Investments, bringing the company’s total funding to $97 million.
The participation in the round included new investors Booz Allen Ventures, Cubit Capital, and Bill Perkins, and with existing investors Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Shield Capital, Initialized Capital, Y Combinator, Giant Step Capital, Republic Capital, and other undisclosed participants. And Ben Sampson, Managing Director of Standard Investments, will join the Albedo Board of Directors.
Albedo’s goal is to provide commercial and defense users with ultra-high-resolution satellite imagery to see details with clarity and then act with certainty. And by rethinking the traditional approach to earth observation satellites, namely developing a stable, agile platform to operate at very low altitudes, Albedo is able to collect data at an exquisite quality with cost-effective, mid-sized satellites.
The constellation under development will co-collect native 10-centimeter (cm) optical imagery and 2-meter thermal infrared imagery, the same resolutions that can only be obtained today by drones/planes, but now at a global scale with on-demand coverage at high frequency.
KEY QUOTES:
“The Series A-1 funding will be used to launch Albedo’s first operational satellite and accelerate constellation deployment — ultimately proving out and proliferating the world’s first high-res VLEO platform.”
“We were fortunate to raise this round at a step-up valuation from some of the top investors in our category. As geopolitical tensions rise and we approach an irreversible climate change tipping point, the need for innovative dual-use technologies is crucial in sustaining a safe global environment.”
– Topher Haddad, CEO of Albedo
“Standard invests in disruptive industrial technologies, and the new orbit frontier of VLEO will open up a wide variety of exciting opportunities around enhanced imagery and data collection, which is a key unmet challenge in modernizing industry and infrastructure. We’re proud to partner with Albedo on their mission to scale aerial-quality data collection from space.”
– Ben Sampson, Managing Director of Standard Investments
