By Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Privateer, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak’s spatial data startup, raised $56.5 million and also acquired analytics company Orbital Insight, a merger that will add data services mapping and intelligence to Privateer’s spatial data offerings, Privateer’s CEO told Reuters.
Privateer, founded in 2021 to help satellite operators navigate Earth’s increasingly crowded orbit, closed its Series A funding round in April, led by the technology-focused venture capital firm space Aero X Ventures with other investors including Luxe Capital, Boca, Starburst and Winklevoss. twins. The news is expected to be announced later Monday.
Orbital’s TerraScope Earth observation platform, designed to be a broad search engine based on satellite images recently captured by other companies, will combine with Privateer’s satellite tracking software.
The new financing allowed Privateer to close a deal to buy Palo Alto-based Orbital Insight on April 14, Privateer CEO Alex Fielding said. Orbital, which merges various data sources such as cellphone location and satellite imagery as part of its intelligence offerings to customers, had been backed by Sequoia and Google Ventures.
Fielding declined to disclose the value of the combined entity or the price of Orbital Insight.
The acquisition of Privateer will expand its offering after revenue prospects in the space situational awareness (SSA) market were limited, Fielding said. SSA is a nascent sector of the space industry, similar to air traffic control, but for satellites in space. Such services are considered crucial for satellite navigation given that there are no international standards to control an increasing amount of space traffic.
“It’s not really a market, it’s actually a group of companies that have provided a stopgap for the government’s failure to provide a space traffic management service,” Fielding said in an interview last week.
Privateer offers its SSA services to satellite imaging companies to help them target targets on Earth and maneuver their satellites around space debris in exchange for the hordes of satellite images commissioned by their clients which could constitute a mapping and information in near real time.
These images will be funneled into a new platform that Fielding plans to make public in the next six months or so.
“You take the image once, you should be able to sell it a million times over, for a fraction of the cost of acquiring it,” Fielding said, referring to the satellite imaging companies Privateer works with to integrate their data.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington; editing by Chris Sanders and Matthew Lewis)
