Near Space Labs nabs $20M to take its high-res imaging Swift robots into the stratosphere

Summary

When it comes to creating images of the earth from above, satellites, drones and planes are the air and spacecraft that tend to come to mind. But a startup called Near Space Labs is taking a very different approach to high-resolution photos from up high. It’s building aircraft that are raised by helium balloons and then rely on currents to stay up, move around to take pictures from the stratosphere, and eventually glide back down to earth. On the back of significant traction with customers using Near Space’s images, the startup has raised $20 million to expand its business. Bold Capital Partners (the firm founded by Peter Diamandis of XPRIZE and Singularity University fame), is leading the Series B round, with strategic backer USAA (the U.S. Automobile Association) participating alongside Climate Capital, Gaingels, River Park Ventures, and previous backers Crosslink Capital, Third Sphere, Draper Associates, and others that are not being named. Near Space has now raised over $40 million, including a $13 million Series A in 2021 that we covered here. The startup is the brainchild of Rema Matevosyan (CEO), Ignasi Lluch (CTO) and Albert Caubet (chief engineer), all three technical founders who worked in space and physics technology and research prior to starting the company. Matevosyan is Armenian, growing up in what she described as a “very technical” family of physicists, programmers and amateur astronomers. After studying mathematics as an undergraduate in Yerevan, she moved to Moscow for graduate school, and it was there, at the Skolkovo Institute, that she first met Lluch, who had come to study there from Spain. Both were drawn to what at the time was thought of as the MIT of Russia, and indeed — it was around 2017 — the institute then was in a joint venture with MIT to fill out that ambition. It was through that relationship that the trio applied to an accelerator in the U.S. called Urban-X in New York. Matevosyan found living in the U.S. to her liking and she sta...