Geospatial analytics startup, Orbital Insight, has closed a $50 million Series C round led by existing investor Sequoia Capital, with participation from new investors Envision Ventures, Balyasny Asset Management, Geodesic Capital, ITOCHU Corporation and Intellectus Partners. Previous investors GV, Lux Capital, and CME Ventures participated in the funding round as well. This latest round brings the four-year-old company’s total funding to $78.7 million.
With this new round of funding, the company plans to expand its portfolio of analytic products and grow its global strategic partnerships and sales presence in key international markets. The firm will also plans hire more employees from the field of engineering, data science, design and sales who are keen to work for geospatial analysis, artificial intelligence and complex problem solving for leading clients around the world.
“We are on the precipice of having daily five-meter imagery of the world, and then daily one-meter imagery within a few years. Until very recently, the standard was weekly 15-meter imagery, with one-meter imagery available much less frequently,” said James Crawford, CEO, Orbital Insight.
“We’ve only just begun to uncover a handful of signals, but we’ve already seen the impact they can have on financial, energy and insurance markets, as well as society as a whole. We’re looking forward to having an even greater presence as we scale alongside the industry,” he added.
Founded in 2015, Orbital Insight has partnered with leading satellite operators, including Airbus, DigitalGlobe, ImageSat, MDA, Planet and Urthecast, to gain access to vast amounts of imagery. It then applies machine learning and computer vision to these images to count and measure objects like cars, agricultural fields, buildings and more to provide an accurate and near real-time understanding of the world.
“Just as Google is organizing the world’s information, Orbital Insight is interpreting it. We’ve been impressed with their progress since their Series A and are thrilled to increase our support for one of the leaders in the geospatial software industry,” said Bill Coughran, Partner at Sequoia and Orbital Insight board member.