The US-based Hydrosat, a satellite data company delivering insights into plant health for commercial, financial, and government partners, has raised a $20 million Series A round, including $5 million in non-dilutive funding to launch the first two thermal infrared satellites into orbit, according to TechCrunch. The investment was led by Statkraft Ventures, with participation of OTB Ventures, Blue Bear Capital, and others.
- Founded in 2017, Hydrosat specializes in geospatial data and analytics. It provides crop yield forecasting, irrigation optimization, drought prediction, asset monitoring, wildfire risk evaluation, and other solutions. The company caters to farming, agribusiness, government, and financial sectors.
- The company’s team in Luxembourg is focused on developing two commercial products: the first focuses on early and accurate yield forecasts of all major crops across the globe, the second product tells farmers exactly when and how much to water their crops. Hydrosat’s own field studies, backed up by NASA research, show that this will increase farm production by 20% and decrease water usage.
- The list of investors in this round includes:
- the leading investor is Statkraft Ventures, a corporate venture capital firm based in Düsseldorf, which seeks to invest in energy and related segments focusing on the internet of things, analytics, industry 4.0, automation, information technology security, electric vehicles, smart home, smart cities, platforms, and transportation sectors in Europe;
- the Warsaw-based OTB Ventures, a leading venture capital firm in CEE, managing over $300 million to invest startups in spacetech, AI and automation, fintech, and cybersecurity. Earlier this year, it has backed ClearSpace, the Swiss-based in-orbit services company.
- Blue Bear Capital, a venture and growth equity investor focused on supporting innovative businesses in the energy supply chain;
- Hartree Partners, FreeFlow Ventures Cultivation Capital, Techstars Santa Barbara Venture Partners, Expon Capital, and Hemisphere Ventures LLC also joined the investment.
- This funding will accelerate the commercial go-to-market of Hydrosat’s two core analytics solutions, VanZyl-1 and VanZyl-2, the fully operational commercial satellite missions. To date, since its launching, the company raised $35 million in investments.