Focus: Software

Booz Allen Ventures invested in Quindar, an early-stage startup focused on automating satellite operations.  Quindar has built a virtualized platform that the company says improves the ability to command cooperative fleets of spacecraft using non-proprietary technologies. The mission management platform currently operates multiple customers and assets in space. Quindar previously raised $8.5 million seed funding. ...

Edge computing startup Armada has raised $40 million in a funding round led by M12, Microsoft‘s venture fund. Armada also announced a separate agreement with Microsoft where its products are now available in the Microsoft Azure cloud software marketplace.  Armada, which emerged from stealth mode in December, sells modular data centers that work with the...

Bright Ascension has closed a 2.3 million pound ($2.8 million) investment round through a convertible loan from Scottish Enterprise, Capital for Colleagues (C4C) and other investors in the company. The funds include 1.5 million pounds ($1.89 million) previously secured in October 2023 as a bridging loan from C4C, alongside Bill Ainscough, and TJ Morris Limited,...

Satellite network management startup Quindar raised an additional $6 million in seed extension rounds from FUSE with the continued investment from Y-Combinator and Funders Club, the company announced in late January. The company plans to use the funding to elevate its spacecraft management software using AI-driven insights and operations.  Last January, Quindar raised $2.5 million...

Commercial space station company Axiom Space is migrating its terrestrial IT infrastructure to AWS, the company announced Monday. The company said that deepening its partnership with AWS will provide the cloud infrastructure on Earth to develop its next-generation space station, Axiom Station.  Axiom Space worked with AWS in April 2022 to install an AWS Snowcone...

European space startup Tilebox has a vision to radically improve how organizations manage and utilize space data. Co-founder and CCO Laura Costa recently spoke with Via Satellite about Tilebox’s mission, after the company recently raised $1.7 million in a pre-seed funding round. Costa believes Tilebox is bringing to market the first integrated platform purpose-built for...

SCOUT Space has made an acquisition to strengthen its defense and technical capabilities, acquiring space domain awareness software company Free Space. SCOUT announced the acquisition on Aug. 24. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.  Both companies are focused on software for space domain awareness. Free Space was founded last year and built satellite autonomy...

IBM announced this week that IBM’s geospatial foundation model watsonx.ai, which is built from NASA‘s satellite data, will now be openly available on AI platform Hugging Face. IBM says this will be the largest geospatial foundation model on Hugging Face and the first-ever open-source AI foundation model built in collaboration with NASA. The model was...

Google connectivity-focused spinoff Aalyria announced a software partnership on Tuesday with defense tech firm Anduril Industries geared toward national security use cases. The companies will integrate Aalyria’s networking orchestration platform, Spacetime, with Lattice, Anduril’s open operating system for national security capabilities. Spacetime, which Aalyria demonstrated at SATELLITE 2023, is designed to manage networks of ground stations,...

Hughes Network Systems is introducing a software-defined networking product geared toward defense needs called Hughes Smart Network Edge.  The software serves as a virtualized SD-WAN router and can remotely manage multi-transport modems across any combination of commercial and military communication networks – including cable, fiber, 5G, Geostationary Orbit (GEO) and Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. It...