A lot of today's emerging technology, from self-driving cars to advanced drones, need eyes in the sky to communicate across all the nooks and crannies of Earth's topography. And an Austin startup hopes to be one of the prime players in selling satellite-based communications devices to the companies and government agencies that need an out-of-the-box solution.
To those ends, Austin-based CesiumAstro Inc. today announced it has raised $60 million in new venture capital funding. The latest round, which brings its total funding to nearly $90 million, was co-led by Airbus Ventures and Forever Ventures. The company also added defense contractor and tech company L3Harris Technologies Inc. (NYSE: LHX) to its capitalization table. Earlier investors, including Kleiner Perkins, Lavrock Ventures, Franklin Templeton Blackhorse Fund and HEICO, also chipped in.
The new funds will help the company scale up to provide more of its on-satellite communication devices to match customer demand, CEO Shey Sabripour said. That means more employees atop the roughly 80 it currently has, most of whom are in Austin.
"We're gonna' absolutely hire as fast as we can in Austin — we'll double our team in Austin or triple it," he said.
The startup also has offices in the Denver area, and it plans to add branches in the Los Angeles area, as well as Washington, D.C.
CesiumAstro's devices attach to satellites and provide high-throughput data transmission and communication capabilities that could be used by the government, its contractors or private companies.
"Autonomous delivery of goods and services via drones will be enabled by this, air taxis of the future will be enabled by this," Sabripour said.
The company has also been investing since 2020 in building its own satellite that wraps around its communications boxes.
"Now we're going to accelerate it and bring that capability into market by the end of 2023 or 2024 timeframe," he said.
The company has had two of its devices in low Earth orbit since September. And it expects to announce plans to launch and deploy several others in coming months.
Having products in orbit to point to may help it win talent in a market flooded by fast-hiring tech companies. For CesiumAstro, the list of desired skills includes radio frequency engineering, antenna engineering, digital signal processing and mechanical engineering.
"There's a lot of competition in Austin and there's a lot of large companies here, and those who weren't are moving their headquarters," Sabripour said. "So everybody's competing for the same same pool of talent."
Sabripour sees education and development of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, as keys to the future for his company and others.
"We are in an incredible era of growth and development of really rebuilding the way telecommunication is done and the way we actually interface with machines," he said. "And what we need is incredible talents in STEM fields ... people who go to these fields will have a very rewarding life ahead of them. There are companies like us that are in desperate need of keeping the American innovation alive. And and so it's all about STEM."
Other venture-backed space companies in Austin include Firefly Aerospace Inc., which launched its first rocket last year, and Slingshot Aerospace.
