Open Cosmos, a UK company that builds and supports satellites working on climate change and humanitarian initiatives, has raised a $50M Series B to support the company’s push into an international market.
The round was led by ETF Partners, Trill Impact, and A&G. It also included participation from Accenture Ventures, Banco Santander InnoEnergy Climate Tech Fund, Claret Capital Partners, Taavet Hinrikus, and Kheng Nam Lee. Open Cosmos has raised $57M to date across all its rounds of funding.
Open Cosmos 101: Open Cosmos wants to get its customers operating and collecting data from orbit without ever having to touch the satellite. Through its Open Orbit service for prices starting at £500,000 (~$626,000), the company will:
- Design the satellite or constellation, including choosing the proper payloads
- Manufacture and test the sat in-house
- Manage insurance and compliance before launch
- Procure launch services through its existing partnerships
- Operate the satellite until end-of-life disposal
Open Cosmos has launched six missions to date and has three more planned in the near future. The data collected from many of these missions (including all the upcoming ones) supports the company’s OpenConstellation, a platform that allows users to share satellite data.
“Space data has always been an important means of understanding planet Earth, but in our view, it is only with its increasing affordability, the amplifying effects of climate change and the rapidly growing number of AI/ML solutions that extract insights from this data that the market is now ready to reach its full potential,” Toba Spiegel, an investment manager at Trill Impact, said in a statement.
Looking ahead: Open Cosmos employs a team of ~70 people across the UK, Portugal, and Spain. With this funding round, it’s hoping to continue expanding internationally, building teams in Latin America, the Middle East, and the Asia Pacific. The company will also continue to build out its analysis and data collection capabilities and begin developing larger satellites.
