Airmo CEO Daria Stepanova Previews Commercial Deals for Climate Tech Startup

Airmo CEO and co-founder Daria Stepanova. Photo: Airmo

It seems hardly a week goes by without some harrowing prediction related to climate change. It is becoming increasingly clear that space companies will have a prominent role in the fight to minimize damage for climate change, as space-based data will provide insights into what can be done next. A number of climate technology space start-ups are emerging in this space including Airmo a German-based climate tech startup focused on providing continuous and precise data on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from space. By combining expertise from the fields of climate tech and space tech, Airmo has a mission to make us rethink our understanding of GHG emissions and enable more targeted climate solutions.

The company wants to build one source of truth for emissions monitoring. Its vision and long-term goal and dream is to build the tool that will help everyone to understand and reduce their emissions. Daria Stepanova, founder and CEO of Airmo, told Via Satellite that with the technology the company is developing, it will be possible to provide global monitoring of the planet.

“The unique part of Airmo is our technology, and the team expertise,” Stepanova says. “Besides becoming this global source of truth, we want to become the standard in carbon emissions reporting. We really want to make the tool that is reliable and accepted by different communities: scientists, governments etc. It is a like a voltmeter, everyone agrees you measure volts this way. We want to build the similar instrument that monitors the impact.”

In late June, the company closed a pre-seed funding round of 5.2 million euros ($5.72 million). It has also received a contract from the European Space Agency (ESA) to build the first satellite mission. Stepanova said the company is well funded to build its minimum viable product and launch its first satellite. The company is de-risking the critical parts of its technology, and in October will make a decision on when the next funding round will be. The next funding round will be in about 12 to 18 months depending on how fast the company moves, she says. Airmo has a target to be profitable in five years from launch. The company launched last year, so the target is to be profitable by 2027.

This year, Airmo will developing the payload, the instrument that it will put on a small satellite platform. It is building the instrument components, testing it and evaluating the performance. Stepanova says the company is on track with this. It is now building a model of the payload to test it.

“The European Space Agency is supporting us lot. Next year, we will be focusing on the satellite launch. We will work together with platform providers to equip the satellite platform, to check all the interfaces, to prepare the satellite. That is all on the technology side,” she says. “Meanwhile, we are exploring the use cases where the data can be used. At the moment we are focusing on the oil & gas industry, the industry with the biggest problems when it comes to emissions monitoring. Next year, we are going to broaden our commercial landscape. We have many opportunities when it comes to strengthening our commercial partnerships.”

One of the key questions facing Airmo is how it will gain customers for its technology. Stepanova believes the main customers for Airmo’s tech and services are companies that want to understand their emissions.

She says, “Any company that wants to understand their emissions, for example direct emissions in the supply chain, and wants to monitor and reduce emissions based on actual data. The O&G industry is an initial target. There are other industries such as the chemicals industry, the cement industry, even certain agricultural companies are quite interested in learning more about their GHG footprints. We also discussing with several German cities the opportunities to run pilot programs.”

She believes that supply chain monitoring is a very interesting use case also. She also cites financial institutions and venture funds that could be interested in understanding the emissions of their portfolio companies. “The landscape is quite broad. A lot of decisions will be based on compliance and targets to reduce emissions. At the very beginning of this type of decision making, it should be based on data, not based on assumptions,” she adds.

Most of the use cases deal with remote and automated monitoring, and Airmo’s technology can also help detect accidents, leaks, and flares. These are areas the oil and gas sector is interested in for repeated monitoring. “They can monitor all the infrastructure in different countries with the same set of tools. They are highly interested in this,” she says.

Stepanova says the company is “quite close” to commercial deals. She thinks this shows there is a huge need for reliable and accurate information about emissions. Airmo is in discussions of contractual details with many O&G companies.

“We have already passed the interest barrier and product market fit step. We are now looking to go into service agreements. By the end of this year, we expect to have several contracts signed. This will come into the power once our satellites are launched,” she adds.

Stepanova believes space tech companies like Airmo can make a huge impact in the area of climate change.

“The impact is enormous,” she says. “There is definitely more and more interest in this area. There is a huge need for a global outlook on the planet – which is driving the number of these companies. However, a lot of them have been using publicly available data and differ from each other with algorithms they are using. This data is either lacking quality [in] precision or resolution or quantity – which proves the point that pure software-based solutions are not that helpful. This brings the second emerging trend – building hardware solutions to address the limitations of existing data sources. And this is the reason why we exist. This is why we want to put our instruments up.”