Albedo, a company developing low-flying satellites that will deliver ultra-high resolution images, announced a $48 million Series A financing round co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Shield Capital, bringing the company’s total funding to $58 million in less than two years since inception.
Participation in the round included new investors Republic Capital, Giant Step Capital, and C16 Ventures, along with existing investors Initialized Capital, Joe Montana’s Liquid 2, Kevin Mahaffey and other undisclosed participants.
Albedo is developing very-low-earth-orbit (VLEO) satellites that will co-collect 10 centimeter (cm) optical imagery and two-meter thermal infrared imagery. The resolution of Albedo’s imagery will enable applications that have been limited by lower resolution satellites or operational limitations of imagery collected from planes. Industries that can benefit include precision agriculture, HD mapping, property insurance, utilities vegetation management, construction and real estate, pipeline monitoring, urban planning and others.
While these markets benefit from the high fidelity 10 cm resolution of the optical imagery on its own, Albedo’s unique ability to co-collect thermal infrared imagery is an added game-changer for many applications. By offering new products that fuse the two types of images together, additional insights can be extracted for these markets including temperature differences, moisture measurements, energy efficiency, and activity indication.
The funding will help complete the building of the satellite and develop the software to support satellite operations and deliver imagery to users.
