HawkEye 360 fetches $58M in new funding round
Courtesy of HawkEye 360
By
Ross Wilkers
The company currently has 21 satellites in orbit and will use this capital to support its move to a new architecture.
Satellite constellation operator HawkEye 360 has completed a new Series D-1 funding round that fetched $58 million from new and existing investors to support new product development and expansion efforts.
The Herndon, Virginia-headquartered company currently has 21 satellites in orbit and is looking to move to a new satellite architecture it calls "Block 3." HawkEye 360 said Thursday it also plans to allocate more investments toward artificial intelligence, data fusion and multi-intelligence orchestration to extract more value from the radio frequency data being collected.
Funds and accounts managed by BlackRock led the Series D-1 round with additional capital provided by Manhattan Venture Partners. Existing investors that participated in the round included Insight Partners, NightDragon, Strategic Development Fund, Razor’s Edge, Alumni Ventures and Adage Capital.
"We'll use this funding to drive our next steps in innovation," HawkEye 360's chief executive John Serafini said in a release. "It speaks volumes that these leading investment firms are confident in the future of RF geospatial intelligence as a critical defense technology."
HawkEye 360's satellites work to detect, characterize and geolocate RF signals in support of customers' use cases in communications, navigation and security.
The company started in 2015 with the idea of using space and RF technology in small satellites to generate data through signal geolocation. Leidos, Jacobs, Airbus and the former Raytheon Co. (now RTX) are among the government contractors that have invested in HawkEye 360 since its founding.
WilmerHale acted as legal counsel for HawkEye 360, while Goodwin Proctor LLP acted as legal counsel.