Capella Raises $97M in Series C Round 

The Pantanal tropical wetlands, which span Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. Capella Space image, captured April 14, 2021.

Capella Space raised $97 million in its Series C financing round, the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) company announced on Monday. NightDragon led the round, with significant participation from existing investors DCVC and Cota Capital. This brings Capella’s total amount of funding raised to $179 million, according to Crunchbase. 

Capella operates a constellation of seven SAR satellites, which can collect imagery through clouds and darkness. Customers can access imagery through the Capella Console, a self-serve satellite tasking platform that allows customers to request and download images and analytics. 

The company reports that it doubled revenue in its last twelve months and expects to more than triple revenue over the next twelve months, projecting more than 400% growth in customer count. To support this growth, Capella plans to use this funding to bolster its advanced analytics capabilities and integrate new automated data offerings into Capella Console. The company will also use the funding to launch its next generation of satellites, which it said will offer improved resolution, quality, imaging capacity and delivery capabilities. 

“Since launching commercial operations last year, we’ve seen not only incredible growth for our company, but for the SAR market more broadly. This new funding is a testament to the market demand for quick delivery of high-quality commercial SAR data and analytics, and we’re seeing it firsthand at Capella,” said CEO Payam Banazadeh.

Ken Gonzalez, managing director at NightDragon, said the firm will help Capella expand potential use cases. “The past few months have shown us the importance of leveraging strong commercial companies like Capella to provide the technology and teams to help our government and allies monitor areas of conflict,” Gonzalez said.