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ICEYE – Zooming In, a New Way to Understand Life on Earth

ICEYE owns and operates the world’s largest SAR satellite constellation that opens access to new levels of data for the persistent monitoring of large and small locations around the globe – every few hours, day and night, and in any weather.

It is headquartered in Finland and operates from five international locations. They now have more than 600 employees, inspired by the shared vision of improving life on Earth by becoming the global source of truth in Earth Observation.

ICEYE was originally founded in 2012 as a course project in Finland’s Aalto University, when they received the first funding from the Aalto Center for Entrepreneurship, and in 2013–2014, the team developed a prototype of the technology in Aalto with public funding from  Tekes (Finland). 

The spin-off company started operations in 2015 with funding of €2.5 million for launching its first radar-based microsatellites. 

ICEYE developed a service for providing near-realtime information about space. Their radar produced imaging in the dark and regardless of weather conditions, which gave them a competitive advantage. Their next step was to build and launch a satellite that expanded coverage of the entire earth. 

Governments and space organisations already using radar satellites for military and research purposes, but ICEYE wanted to make this technology available at a commercially profitable price level for all.

They information now offer almost realtime data on agricultural land monitoring, ship movements, on illegal fishing, illicit oil discharges, and give support when disaster strikes like from storms and floods

They secured funding for some €2.5 million from True Ventures (USA) and Founder.org (USA) Lifeline Ventures (Finland), and €2.5 million from Tekes, together with a development loan of €1.7 million from the Arctic Seas programme.

ICEYE has seen formidable growth in demand from customers who want more and better images of various parts of the earth for the above purposes.

Their fascinating history of growth and the resulting successful funding deals can be seen on their website:

https://www.iceye.com/company/history…

The most recent funding was arranged by Citigroup who acted as the exclusive private placement. ICEYE signed an agreement signed for an oversubscribed $93M growth funding round backed by Finnish sovereign wealth fund, Solidium Oy, leads the round, with participation from Move Capital Fund I, Blackwells Capital, Christo Georgiev, and existing investors.

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