Kul Bhushan · · 2 min readIndian spacetech startup soars with $25m in series A money
Spacetech startup Pixxel has raised US$25 million in series A funding in a round led by Radical Ventures. Investors including Blume Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners also participated in the fundraise.
The Pixxel team / Photo credit: Pixxel
Pixxel is building a constellation of hyperspectral Earth-imaging satellites and analytical tools to gather insights for purposes like environment and sustainability, agriculture, and more. The startup has worked with notable space organizations such as the Indian Space Research Organization, SpaceX, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The Los Angeles- and Bengaluru-based firm said it will launch the first of its satellites as part of SpaceX’s upcoming Transporter-4 mission. These Earth-imaging satellites have 50x higher resolution than their existing multispectral counterparts, the company added.
Pixxel was founded in 2019 by Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal. Both previously worked with Hyperloop India, one of the finalists in the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition in 2017. In March 2021, Pixxel closed a seed funding round of US$7.3 million, with investors such as Omnivore and Techstars participating.
The startup said the fresh capital will help speed up production of what it calls the world’s highest-resolution hyperspectral satellite constellation.
“This funding will not only assist us with this goal but will help us improve our software capabilities so that organizations of all sizes can access and understand this data,” Ahmed, who also serves as the company’s CEO, said in a statement.
See also: How Southeast Asia’s spacetech industry can truly take off
Other investors in this round include:
Editing by Miguel Cordon and Lorenzo Kyle Subido
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