Pixxel, a Los Angeles and Bengaluru-based startup, has raised $25 million in Series A funding.
The funding was led by Radical Ventures, Seraphim Space Investment, Lightspeed Partners, Blume Ventures, Sparta LLC, and Inventus Capital India.
The fresh capital will be utilized by Pixxel to expedite production of the world’s highest resolution hyperspectral satellite constellation and to provide offers to industry AI-powered insights that discover, resolve, and predict climate issues at a fraction of traditional satellite costs.
The company is launching its first-ever hyperspectral satellites as a part of SpaceX’s upcoming April Transporter-4 mission. These microsatellites have 50x higher resolution than existing multispectral counterparts and different drone or land-based multispectral sensors. Pixxel will be capable of fetching data on a global scale.
Traditional Earth-imaging system collects data in the visible light spectrum, limiting the end use cases. Hyperspectral imaging collects data across 40x more wavelengths and can be used for a myriad of applications in India, such as:
- Monitoring methane emissions,
- Quantifying carbon sequestration, and
- Checking disease outbreaks across fields.
Pixxel’s platform unlocks a range of novel environment and sustainability use cases, offering tools for agriculture, oil and gas, mining, and environmental agencies to analyze geospatial composites of the Earth’s surface in real-time through a simple API.
The startup retrieved its first hyper spectral satellite images from a camera that was launched last year with NanoAvionics and Dragonfly Aerospace. The photos captured the crop health of Mexican farmland, soil nutrient content, water purity levels, and types of flora in the vegetation.
Pixxel was founded in 2019 by Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal. Pixxel is creating a system that monitors the health of the planet by building and launching hyperspectral imaging satellites. It claims to have worked with notable organizations such as the ISRO, NASA JPL, and SpaceX.
EXECUTIVE OPINION:
“We’re committed to providing a critical tool in the fight against climate change, helping researchers and on-the-ground responders detect and develop effective strategies to combat imminent environmental threats. This funding will not only assist us with this goal but will help us improve our software capabilities so that organizations of all sizes can access and understand this data,” said Awais Ahmed, CEO at Pixxel.
