WASHINGTON — Hyperspectral imaging startup Pixxel raised $36 million in a Series B funding round led by Google.
Pixxel announced June 1 the Series B round, which included Google in addition to existing investors Radical Ventures, Lightspeed, Blume Ventures, growx, Sparta and Athera. The corporate, which didn’t disclose the valuation of the round, has now raised $71 million.
The corporate, with offices in the USA and India, is working on a constellation of hyperspectral imaging satellites. It launched its first pathfinder satellites in 2022 and is planning a constellation of 24 satellites it expects to deploy by 2025.
“With this round of funding, we’re even closer now to realizing our mission of constructing a health monitor for the planet and empowering people around the globe to make informed decisions about our collective well-being,” Awais Ahmed, chief executive and co-founder of Pixxel, said in a press release.
The funding will go towards development of that constellation in addition to an analytics platform called Aurora that the corporate says will use artificial intelligence technologies to supply useful information products to customers.
Pixxel seeks to tap into growing interesting in hyperspectral data, which provides much greater spectral information but has long has a fame for being difficult to work with. Pixxel is one in every of six corporations that signed agreements with the National Reconnaissance Office in March for that agency’s Strategic Business Enhancements program for hyperspectral imagery. Under the agreements, NRO will assess the corporate’s technical and business plans, and later procure hyperspectral data for demonstrations.
Google didn’t comment on its investment in Pixxel, but an industry source said the funding got here through the Google for India Digitalisation Fund. That fund, established in 2020, put aside about $10 billion to speculate in Indian corporations, including those constructing recent services relevant for Indian needs, supporting digital transformation efforts, and leveraging technology and artificial intelligence for health, education and agriculture.
The scale of Google’s investment in Pixxel was not disclosed, but can be a small fraction of an earlier investment it made within the Earth imaging industry. In 2014, Google paid an estimated $500 million to accumulate Skybox Imaging, which was developing a constellation of high-resolution imaging smallsats. Google rebranded Skybox as Terra Bella, but later divested it, transferring it to Planet.
