Canadian Space Technology Startup SkyWatch Raises $17.2 Million to Democratize Satellite Data

SkyWatch Space Applications Inc., a Waterloo-based space technology startup, announced the completion of a $17.2M USD Series B round of financing to further democratize access to Earth observation data. Drive Capital led the investment round with participation from existing investors Bullpen Capital, Space Capital, Golden Ventures, and BDC Ventures.

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The Series B financing builds on an exceptional first half of 2021 for SkyWatch, which is seeing revenue growth in excess of 450% over the same period last year, highlighting the appetite for Earth observation data from the private sector. SkyWatch also announced the launch of the first TerraStream-enabled satellite earlier this month, which further advances the company’s mission of making commercial Earth observation data more available and accessible. With 40 satellites under contract for launch by SatRevolution (Poland), SpaceJLTZ (Mexico), and Wyvern (Canada), and others, SkyWatch is enabling the future of the global commercial satellite launch market and removing the barriers to entry typically present in the space industry.

“Over the past couple of years, SkyWatch has built key enabling technologies for the future of Earth Observation capture and distribution, through the EarthCache and TerraStream platforms. Today, we are excited to announce that we’ll be able to scale that technology globally, to both consumers and providers of satellite data, with the closing of our Series B financing,” said James Slifierz, SkyWatch’s CEO and co-founder. “We’re thrilled to welcome Drive Capital, a firm with deep experience in scaling technology companies, to the SkyWatch team. We’re also happy to have the continued support from our earliest investors, who continue to believe in our ambitions to change the Earth Observation industry.”

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“Space privatization is leading to an entirely new infrastructure in the sky,” said Nick Solaro, Partner at Drive Capital. “As with platform shifts in the past, like the Internet, this infrastructure will yield new categories of world-changing companies. We believe SkyWatch is one of them.”

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