Charlottesville satellite imaging and data analytics company Astraea expects to see significant growth over the next 12 months after raising a $6.5 million Series A round, according to Sara Eden, head of revenue at the company.
Astraea was founded in 2016 by CEO Brendan Richardson, CTO Daniel Bailey and Head of Engineering Simeon Fitch. The company has established partnerships with major satellite companies and sells satellite imaging time to companies and nongovernment agencies. Astraea either provides data analytics on the images or lets clients conduct their own analysis. It sells software-as-a-service packages based on a client’s specific needs.
Astraea focuses on the real estate, renewable energy, agriculture and conservation finance sectors.
Eden said the founders realized that a need existed in the marketplace for access to real-time satellite images and analytics built around those images.
“Satellite imagery is extremely complex and very challenging to incorporate into an analytics platform,” Eden said. “Our goal is to help customers use satellite imagery at a very basic level to be able to unlock key insights about their business.”
Eden said the company’s first few years were focused on developing its platform and testing. It has spent the last several years working with select clients to refine its concept.
The company declined to provide current revenue information, but Eden the company is earning money. It currently has 10 employees after hiring several new data scientists. Astraea expects to hire a few more people in the future as it looks to grow.
“I think over the next six to 12 months, a lot of what we're doing is to be in scale mode,” Eden said. “So, really our continuing to be able to scale our sales and customer support to really meet the client demand that we're seeing. We're getting a lot of great traction with the platform that we've built. And so, our goal from here is to continue to accelerate on the momentum that we're seeing in these various different markets, continue to hire sales and business development professionals, as well as work to onboard and bring on data scientists and software engineers.”
When asked how the company’s platform operates, Eden used an example involving the carbon exchange marketplace, where companies purchase carbon credits to reduce environmental impacts. She said for a long time the carbon marketplace operated on more of a handshake model than with verifiable data. Astraea is working with NCX, which operates a carbon marketplace and is using Astraea’s platform to notify someone if a forest sold in the carbon market has been cut down.
“We'll create a change detection algorithm that basically looks at that imagery, detects that change, and then alert our clients that something like that is happening,” Eden said.
Another example she used was sustainable agriculture, with the platform taking images of where different farming practices are being developed. Astraea’s satellite images and data analysis can be combined with data and observations from the ground, which in turn can help determine better farming practices.
Nongovernmental organizations like the Nature Conservancy are looking to tap into the power of satellites imagery for nature preservation, she said.
Funding for Astraea’s new round was provided by Aligned Climate Capital, a bicoastal investment firm focused on companies decarbonizing the economy, and Charlottesville's Carbon Drawdown Collective. Other participants in the round include University of Virginia nonprofit network CAV Angels; Vero Beach, Florida’s Tydall Investment Partners; and a return investment from the University of Virginia Seed Fund.
The new round brings Astraea's lifetime funding to $16.5 million, according to Crunchbase.
