SpaceSense is very excited to announce the closing of a seed round of €1 million, driven by Techmind, Space Ventures Investors and business angels like Marc Batty and Thomas Cabrol (co-founders of Dataiku). The fresh funds will allow the development of this spacetech’s artificial intelligence platform for satellite imagery and the expansion of the team with 7 new hires.
Founded in 2019, SpaceSense aims to make insights from satellite images accessible to as many people as possible, and is already supported by organisations like the European Space Agency, 50 Partners, Ecole Polytechnique, and CNES. The complexity of satellite image data mixed with AI makes it’s analysis very delicate and accessible to very few companies, however the global nature of this tech makes it vital to understand and fight climate change. Through it’s platform, SpaceSense bridges the gap by simplifying the creation and deployment of AI models specifically designed to extract advanced insights from satellite images.
This need was first identified by Jyotsna Budideti, co-founder and CEO of SpaceSense: “By working on different projects using satellite imagery, I noticed that regardless of the final use case of the analysis, a significant part of my job was always the same. There was a possibility to create a tool that would significantly reduce the duration and the complexity of these satellite imagery projects. This is SpaceSense’s goal. We position ourselves as a provider of ready-to-use satellite insights.”
The platform’s ambition is to be used in several industries but will concentrate on Agriculture at first. “Agriculture is one of the domains which can benefit the most from satellite imagery” points out Sami Yacoubi, co-founder and CEO, “The legal and environmental challenges that farmers face push them to use advanced crop monitoring solutions. The satellite is the perfect compromise between accuracy and cost”. The platform allows users to customize their models for very diverse uses like yield prediction, soil humidity detection, crop health monitoring, etc.
ESA and CNES, the European and French space agencies, help SpaceSense in its development. Christelle Astorg-Lepine, Programme Manager of “Connect by CNES” explained more: “SpaceSense managed to place itself on the automation and satellite data exploitation market in record times. Thanks to a powerful vision and a great team, they contribute today to prove that Space has a huge potential to serve our planet”.
The addition of experts to the company board is allowing the startup to build an exceptional scientific committee, now with the joining of Thomas Cabrol, Dataiku’s co-founder and Chief Data Scientist: “The ready-to-use algorithms and models in SpaceSense’s solution have the potential to address today’s and tomorrow’s agricultural and environmental challenges, but also to other use cases.Their technology enables them to bring the benefits of artificial intelligence to the service of all”.
With the fresh funds, SpaceSense will be able to recruit 7 engineers and doctors to accelerate its development and reach its ambition, democratizing Space intelligence.
