City Sky raises $30 million for stratospheric balloons

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — City Sky, an organization that has developed moveable stratospheric balloons to carry out imaging and different purposes sometimes performed by satellites, has raised $30 million to develop its work.

The Denver-based firm introduced Feb. 6 it raised the Sequence B spherical, led by new investor Altos Ventures together with a number of returning traders. The corporate final raised $9.75 million in a Sequence A spherical in October 2023.

Andrew Antonio, chief govt of City Sky, stated in an interview that the funding will assist the corporate meet the rising demand it’s seeing from the U.S. army in its balloons, which may take small payloads into the stratosphere for imaging, communications or different purposes. That demand has grown considerably because the Sequence A spherical, he stated.

“We mainly have constructed for them a what they seek advice from as a personally deployable satellite tv for pc,” he stated of its protection prospects. “One soldier, inside 5 minutes, can launch one in all our stratospheric balloons from just about wherever.”

He stated the funding will assist the corporate spend money on enhancements within the balloon system, holding them the identical measurement however enabling longer period flights in addition to new payloads and software program to serve protection prospects. The corporate may even spend money on cameras and different payloads for industrial purposes, permitting them to return information with out recovering the balloon as the corporate has beforehand performed.

That can allow the corporate to offer persistent protection with its balloons. Antonio famous that the corporate not too long ago demonstrated this by flying balloons over the Palisades hearth in Los Angeles, offering longwave infrared imagery to help firefighting efforts. That persistence is also used to observe pipelines for unlawful tapping, he stated.

That functionality provides City Sky an edge over satellite tv for pc imaging firms, he argued. “There isn’t a satellite tv for pc at this time, nor any satellite tv for pc constellation deliberate sooner or later, that may picture someplace each second,” he stated, including that his firm’s balloons also can present imagery at increased decision and decrease prices than satellites.

He does see a chance for satellites to enhance balloons, with satellites offering world protection that may “tip-and-cue” extra localized, persistent observations by balloons. That’s significantly true in protection purposes, he stated, the place “we’re a part of a a lot bigger protection ecosystem that connects satellites to balloons to drones and plane and troopers beneath it.”

On the protection facet, balloons have the extra profit that they’re far cheaper than the weapons that may be utilized by an adversary to destroy them. “We’re already providing low-cost persistence to the protection neighborhood in a manner that’s economically uneven and that compliments the entire satellite tv for pc ecosystem that they have already got,” he stated.

City Sky at the moment has 40 staff and expects to develop to 60 to 65 by the tip of the yr, Antonio stated. The corporate flew about 150 balloons final yr and initiatives considerably growing that this yr, with its present 50,000-square-foot facility capable of produce lots of of balloons per 30 days.

Altos, the lead investor within the Sequence B spherical, stated it noticed the potential for City Sky to steer long-term development on this market. “In City Sky, we see a category-defining alternative and the potential for an amazing, lasting firm. We’re excited to associate with them to unlock the complete worth of the stratosphere globally,” stated Anthony Lee, managing director at Altos, in an announcement.

Antonio described Altos as a “affected person” investor prepared to help City Sky over the lengthy haul. “These firms take time to mature, particularly within the stratosphere the place we’re at inning two of 9 when it comes to what I believe all of us consider the stratosphere might be,” he stated. “That’s one in all their core values at Altos, constructing category-defining companies however permitting them to develop over longer time horizons.”

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