CesiumAstro secures $60 million in funding from Airbus Ventures and others

[March 02, 2022]  By Jane Lanhee Lee

(Reuters) - CesiumAstro Inc, a startup that builds hardware and software for aerospace communications, said on Wednesday it has raised $60 million in funding from investors including Airbus Ventures and Kleiner Perkins.

CesiumAstro’s Founder and CEO, Shey Sabripour, holds the company’s Nightingale active phased array communications platform which is used for communications, including between low orbit satellites and other mobile devices like cars, planes and drones, in Austin, Texas, U.S. February 28, 2022. CesiumAstro/Handout via REUTERS

Part of the funding will be used to further develop its own low-orbit satellites, said CesiumAstro founder and CEO Shey Sabripour.

Austin-based CesiumAstro's products enable connectivity between satellites, drones, planes, cars and other mobile devices. Its hardware generates electronically steerable beams of radio waves carrying information between the devices and its software stitches the information together.

The products have gone beyond the prototype stage, said Sabripour.

"We're starting to ship our initial flight equipment to various customers like NASA...we’re building hardware for Air Force and others," he said.

CesiumAstro's satellites, which will incorporate its communications hardware, are set to be introduced to the market before the first quarter of 2024, said Sabripour.

CesiumAstro said it has raised nearly $90 million in capital since it started in 2017. It declined to say how much it is valued at in this latest funding round which was co-led by Airbus Ventures and Forever Ventures.

(Reporting by Jane Lanhee Lee; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

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