Rendering of HawkEye 360’s global signal intelligence. Photo: HawkEye 360

HawkEye 360 on Thursday said it has acquired Innovative Signals Analysis (ISA) in a deal that is financially accretive, adds government customers and strengthens its platform for generating insights from the constellation of radio frequency (RF)-based Earth observing satellites it operates.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. ISA, which will operate as a subsidiary of HawkEye, has 170 employees, the “vast majority” with secret clearances, John Serafini, HawkEye’s CEO, told Defense Daily on Wednesday.

HawkEye also announced a new round of debt and equity financing valued at $150 million to support the ISA acquisition. The Northern Virginia-based company did not provide the split between the Series E equity round and the debt financing.

Serafini said Dallas-based ISA brings a “meaningful amount of revenue and a material amount of profit.” A second reason for the acquisition is ISA has 30 years of building a “trusted relationship with critical U.S. government customers” that the combined companies can better serve, he said.

Lastly, ISA complements HawkEye’s signal-processing expertise with a “cadre of intellectual property and processing know how that is unparalleled” that will lead to better capabilities such as faster data processing and improved performance in challenging RF environments, Serafini said.

In a statement, Serafini said the “acquisition makes a transformative moment in our long-term vision for HawkEye 360.”

HawkEye’s constellation of over 30 RF sensing satellites tracks vessels, vehicles, aircraft and space activity. For example, ships that turn off their transponders and “go dark” can still be found and tracked by HawkEye’s spacecraft through the detection of other electronic emissions aboard a vessel.

HawkEye largely relies on time, distance and frequency difference of arrival algorithms based on three ball RF geolocation technologies to locate transmitters, Serafini said in the interview. ISA is also “expert” at three ball geolocation and is “extremely good at angle of arrival processing and geolocation algorithms, which usually just uses one sensor,” he said. “So, they bring us new methodologies for being able to geolocate RF emitters that will be new to HawkEye.”

The Series E preferred equity round was co-led by existing investors Night Dragon and Center15 Capital, with participation for other investors. The mezzanine debt financing was provided by Silicon Valley Bank, which is a division of First Citizens Bank, Pinegrove Venture Capital Partners and Hercules Capital, Inc.

“We’re getting to the stage of maturity in our business development, where we should be leveraging debt alongside equity to make every financing less dilutive, so what we have here is a combination of debt and equity,” Serafini said.

Craig Searle, HawkEye’s chief financial officer, said in a statement that the financing strengthens the balance sheet, supports operations and scaling the business.

This story was first published by Defense Daily