Spacetech startup Spotlite has just secured €1.5 million in fresh funding. The Portuguese startup has developed an infrastructure monitoring system, using satellite imagery, that can give early detection of harmful events.
Developments in the spacetech vertical are giving us incredibly valuable insights here on earth. Through satellite imagery and technology, improved forecasts and insights into life on earth can be generated, giving us greater prediction capabilities and oversight. Portugal is picking up pace in the European space sector, with startups like Spotlite putting the nation on the map as an emerging spacetech hub.
The Funding
Spotlite has announced the raise of a €1.5 million Seed round to supercharge its expansion and product development. Funding for the Coimbra-based company was led by Indico and EDP Ventures with participation from Portugal Ventures and Shilling.
Spotlite: Harnessing satellite imagery
Founded in 2017 by Ricardo Cabral and Martino Correia, Spotlite offers an infrastructure monitoring SaaS solution based on satellite imagery. The platform is able to provide risk analytics and recommendations, and, can allow for early detection of potentially harmful events – for example, ground and slope subsidence, vegetation encroachment, flooding or third-party interference.
The Coimbra-born startup started out in the transportation sector and has since expanded to use in mining sites, energy infrastructure and buildings.
Luís Manuel, Managing Partner at EDP Ventures explained: “Spotlite contributes so that, using a combination of satellite data, and data from local sensors, EDP’s teams can carry out continuous monitoring activities at a large scale and with high precision, thus allowing for effective predictive maintenance activities, and the early detection of potentially harmful events, in turn minimizing the downtime of critical infrastructures, such as those of the energy sector.”
This funding comes fresh on the back of Spotlite’s successful entry into the UK market, through a pilot with a highway concessionaire. Spotlite won a UK Tech Rocketship Award in Portugal and attended the London Tech Week, where it was one of the semi-finalists.
Stephan Morais, Managing General Partner of Indico Capital, added: “Spotlite is transforming the way infrastructure companies manage risk and preventive maintenance with accurate data and actionable recommendations. Current solutions are project-based and the market is huge and increasing, hence our investment from day one”.
Future plans
The startup is now also accredited by ANI (National Agency of Innovation) as an entity with professional competence for developing R&D activities. This new investment will be used to target further product development and commercial expansion. Spotlite aims to make key hires to further fuel its plans.
Co-founder Martino Correia explained: “The new funding round presents an amazing opportunity and a significant step towards the implementation of our vision. Taking place nearly one year after our initial pre-seed round, it will accelerate the development of Spotlite and the growth of the team behind it, providing to our clients a unique toolset for infrastructure monitoring. Companies such as Egis, EDP or Brisa are already using Spotlite for structural health monitoring and risk analysis. Now we intend to expand to other European and LatAm markets, pursuing the goal of establishing a leading global position.”
