World View Successfully Closes Fundraising Round at $26.5 Million

Photo: World View.

World View announced that it has successfully closed a $26.5 million Series C financing round led by Accel. The Series C also included major investment by Canaan and Norwest Venture Partners, both of which participated in World View’s previous Series B round of financing.

Accel, known for its record of early stage investments in companies such as Facebook, DJI, Dropbox, Slack, Spotify, and others, has taken the first step into the space sector with this World View investment. Accel partner Sameer Ghandi, who led early investment in Dropbox, DJI, Spotify, and Venmo, will join World View’s board of directors.

With this funding, World View will accelerate the development and commercialization of its Stratollite vehicle, which offers persistent high-altitude flight over customer-specified areas of interest for long duration missions (weeks and months on end). When fully commercialized, the Stratollite will serve applications including 24/7 remote sensing, remote communications, natural disaster support, and improved weather data capture. The continued development of this technology will allow the Stratollite to harness variable stratospheric wind currents to steer the vehicle in any desired direction, the company stated.

World View has also appointed Tom Ingersoll as its new executive chairman. Ingersoll previously presided as president and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Skybox Imaging, overseeing Google’s acquisition of the imaging constellation in 2014 before it was sold off to Planet two years later.