Pixxel is a space data company building a constellation of the world’s highest-resolution hyperspectral earth imaging satellites and the analytical tools to mine insights from the data. The images gathered by Pixxel’s satellites will provide global coverage every 24 hours and help detect, monitor, and predict global phenomena across agriculture, mining, environment, and energy use cases. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Pixxel CEO and co-founder Awais Ahmed to learn more.
Awais Ahmed’s Background
Ahmed has been passionate about science and space since he was quite young. And Ahmed said:
“While I was an undergraduate student at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, I was a founding member and engineering lead at Hyperloop India, where we built India’s first Hyperloop pod prototype. As part of the competition, we became the only winning team invited to visit the SpaceX HQ in 2017 to build, demonstrate, and race the Hyperloop vehicle, and that was a clarifying moment for me as I realized that I want to dedicate my life towards space exploration and humanity’s expansion into space.”
Formation Of Pixxel
How did the idea for Pixxel come together? Ahmed shared:
“While I was at SpaceX, looking firsthand at the rocket engines being built made it very clear to me that I wanted to work in space technology for the betterment of Earth. I came back to college and decided to work in the field of satellite imagery analysis, as it seemed an attainable goal as a student. The plan was to build AI models that could take in terabytes of satellite imagery and extract actionable insights and patterns from that data to help tackle problems across agriculture, mining, and natural disasters.”
“But I realized that the satellite imagery of the earth that was freely available for analysis in most cases was years old, and even then, the data available was not rich or detailed enough for a lot of these use cases.”
“After noticing and validating a lack of information-rich space imagery, the realization was that we needed a better type of satellite imagery to see the unseen problems plaguing our planet. It was at this time that I presented the work I was doing to my cofounder, Kshitij Khandelel, and we founded Pixxel with a vision to build a health monitor for our planet. Pixxel is a space data company building a constellation of the world’s highest-resolution hyperspectral earth imaging satellites and the analytical tools to mine insights from the data. With already three hyperspectral satellites in space, we are now working towards launching six satellites by 2024 and 18 others by 2025.”
Favorite Memory
What has been Ahmed’s favorite memory working for Pixxel so far? Ahmed reflected:
“The night of the launch of our first satellite. Being together with the tens of Pixxel employees who had put their blood and sweat into the satellite and watching the rocket take off with our satellites perched atop it was a feeling that’s hard to forget. Equal parts nervousness and excitement as the satellite departed to its designated orbit.”
Challenges Faced
What are some of the challenges Ahmed faced in building the company? Ahmed acknowledged:
“The space industry is quite complex. As the industry has continued to grow, the greatest challenge has been continuing to scale our team. As we see continued interest and demand within the industry, our team has had to develop technology at quicker speeds.”
“Raising capital in the early stages also presented a few challenges. As we were just starting off and were still students, investors didn’t take us seriously. We had to show a lot of proof points to convince some of our earliest investors to put their faith in us.”
“Building the satellites themselves has been a learning process. Figuring out how to build a 5-meter hyperspectral satellite without spending a lot of money for the first time and how to figure out the supply chain for it, which is global, was a challenging but fun experience.”
Core Products
What are Pixxel’s core products and features? Ahmed explained:
“Pixxel is a space data company, and our satellites use hyperspectral technology to capture images at hundreds of wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum and reveal key data about the health of our planet. Both the hyperspectral constellation and advanced data analytics platform will give up to 10x more information compared to today’s multispectral satellites in space and increase the spectral resolution available by 50x.”
“This technology creates the best geospatial dataset, relevant across industries spanning government, agriculture, oil, gas, mining, and climate. Currently, Pixxel has 50+ customers across these sectors, which use our data to detect, monitor, and predict global environmental changes such as emissions, oil spills, resources, crop health, and more.”
“With this, we recently launched Aurora – an AI-powered analytics platform in beta version to make hyperspectral analysis accessible for everyone.”
Evolution Of Pixxel’s Technology
How has Pixxel’s technology evolved since launching? Ahmed noted:
“We’ve grown tremendously since our company launched in 2019. We now have three hyperspectral satellites in space, and our team has begun to build satellites fully in-house. Our most recent launch, Anand, was our first satellite to launch that we developed from start to finish. This was a huge milestone for our team. The resolutions of our cameras have significantly gotten better from 30m in the first demo to 5m now in the Firefly satellites. The satellite capabilities themselves have gotten much better in terms of their pointing accuracies, data rates, onboard computations, etc.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of Pixxel’s most significant milestones? Ahmed cited:
– Some recent milestones include announcing a $36 million Series B funding round led by Google after launching three Pathfinder satellites into orbit and the first government contract with the NRO.
– Launch of the highest resolution commercial hyperspectral satellites for the first time in 2022.
– NRO contract, which portrayed their foray into the US Government
– Signing over 50 customers across ag, mining, O&G, and other sectors, showing significant pent-up demand for hyperspectral data.
Customer Success Stories
Upon asking Ahmed about customer success stories, he commented:
“Currently, Pixxel has 50+ customers from industries spanning government, agriculture, oil, gas, mining, and climate. One example of a Pixxel customer is mining company Rio Tinto, which uses Pixxel’s technology to help reduce the disturbance footprint of exploration activities, monitor the operational and environmental performance of active mining operations, and monitor biodiversity and vegetation health around closed sites.”
Funding/Revenue
In terms of funding and revenue metrics, Ahmed revealed:
“Most recently, in June of 2023, Pixxel announced a $36 million Series B round. With this round, the venture funding totals $71 Million so far, and the company is backed by investors such as Google, Lightspeed, Radical Ventures, Accenture Ventures, Relativity’s Jordan Noone, Seraphim Capital, Ryan Johnson, Blume Ventures, Sparta LLC, growX ventures, Athera Venture Partners, and Omnivore VC among others.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is Pixxel pursuing? Ahmed assessed:
“The earth observation market was estimated at $3.3 billion in 2021.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Pixxel from its competition? Ahmed affirmed:
“Pixxel’s commercial satellites are capable of capturing orbital images in more than 150 bands of color from the visible and infrared spectrums at a resolution of 5 meters per pixel, which provides to 10x more information compared to today’s multispectral satellites in space and will increase the spectral resolution available by 50x.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of Pixxel’s future company goals? Ahmed concluded:
“Pixxel’s goal is to create a health monitor for the planet by launching hyperspectral satellites that detect unseen environmental changes such as oil spills, methane leaks, wildfires, water contamination, pollution, and more.”
