Announcing our Series A Fundraising

The Round

Today, we are thrilled to share an exciting milestone for Albedo. We’ve closed a $48M Series A, co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Shield Capital. This brings our total funding to $58M in less than two years since Albedo’s inception.

Beyond the funding, we are fortunate to partner with two lead investors that reflect the breadth of applications our imagery will support.  With Breakthrough’s focus on companies enabling net-zero emissions, and Shield’s focus on companies supporting both commercial and government customers, we could not have imagined a better duo to join the Albedo journey.  We’re excited to welcome Matt Eggers and Raj Shah to our Board of Directors.

Participation in the round included new investors Republic Capital, Giant Step Capital, and C16 Ventures, along with existing investors Initialized Capital, Joe Montana’s Liquid 2, Kevin Mahaffey, and others.

The Journey

When AyJay, Winston, and I started Albedo, we knew we were onto something but were holding it loosely given the moonshot nature of our vision. The plan: build very low-flying satellites to capture visible and thermal imagery at a resolution far higher than what exists today, and do it at a price point that enables the true potential of commercial and government applications to be realized.

Almost two years later, that plan hasn’t changed.  While the technical progress made by our team is nothing short of spectacular, the underlying force that has driven our progress is the excitement from our future customers.  For a company navigating the ups and downs that come with an extensively complex technical roadmap, it is absolutely essential to be driven by a powerful market force of customers practically pulling this product out of our hands.

I’ll politely brag for a moment on some of the incredible milestones our team has achieved. Following an immensely valuable education in startups from Y Combinator, we were fortunate to partner with Initialized on our $10M seed round, enabling us to build an incredible team, mature our technology, and begin burning down risks. Our top regulatory risk was quickly burned down upon receiving an official NOAA license to sell 10cm resolution commercially.  As our design matured, we were able to simulate accurate representations of both our 10 cm optical imagery and 2 meter thermal imagery. We won a Phase II SBIR with AFWERX/Space Force, closed tens of millions in binding pre-sales, and closed hundreds of millions in customer Letters of Intent. All the while, our team has been burning down one technical risk after another as we execute on our roadmap to field this novel space technology.

I’m truly humbled by what our nimble team of 21 has accomplished, and the mission focus that drives each of them every day.

With that groundwork laid and a fresh $48M in the bank, it’s time to step on the gas and bring new meaning to the term execution. Over the next two years, we’ll be developing novel precision pointing algorithms, testing prototype electronics, ensuring our telescope mirrors are polished to 1/1000 of a human hair, and so much more; all with our sights set on delivering exquisite imagery to our customers and the impact it will have on our world. With geopolitical tensions on the rise and an urgent need to curb a changing climate, there’s never been a stronger need for a dual-use technology that can be simultaneously used to support our national defense mission and mitigate our global environmental/climate crisis.

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