German tech startup Airmo has raised €5 million (~$5.8 million) in its seed round of funding, the company announced on Thursday.

Airmo markets a proprietary sensor for detecting methane leaks from energy pipelines. Methane leaks contribute heavily to planetary warming and cost energy providers billions in revenue, the company said in a statement shared with Via Satellite.

Its sensor, which combines short-wave infrared imaging with light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology, is the first of its kind small enough to fit on a small satellite, and can spot a methane leak the size of a car from Low-Earth Orbit (LEO), the company said.

Ananda Impact Ventures led the round, alongside Unconventional Ventures, kopa ventures, Desai Ventures, Hypernova, and Matthias Fackler and Francesco Starache, two partners of the EQT Group. Antler, Findus Ventures, E2MC and Pilabs participated as existing investors.

Airmo said the capital would allow the company to transition from demonstrations to scaled commercial operations, and to establish a presence in the Middle East and North Africa, a region dense with oil and gas infrastructure. The company aims to launch its first satellite in the second quarter of 2027, CEO Daria Stepanova told Via Satellite.

“Airmo has a simple mission: to help operators find and stop greenhouse gas losses, starting with methane,” Stepanova commented in the statement. “We have developed this unique instrument to achieve this goal. With this funding, we are moving beyond validation into continuous monitoring that will solve this problem. And launching our first satellite mission is a major step towards realizing our ambition to monitor 12 million energy assets worldwide.”

Stepanova believes no economically accessible tool exists to help operators quickly detect methane leaks. Such leaks are usually detected with handheld tools, she said, and using them to sweep a large area can take weeks.

The European Union’s Methane Regulation has obliged operators to monitor and report their methane emissions since August 2024. Airmo’s technology will assist operators with regulatory compliance, but Stepanova said the company is primarily basing its use cases on lost revenue, pointing to the United States’ recent scaling back of its environmental regulations.

In 2023, the company earned €5.2 million in a pre-seed funding round.

“We backed Airmo at inception because we saw a team with the technical depth and grit required to tackle one of the planet’s most urgent challenges,” Alan Poensgen, a partner at Antler, Airmo’s first investor, said. “Since our initial pre-seed investment, the team has proven that AIRMO’s end-to-end methane monitoring service is not just visionary, but commercially essential for energy operators seeking reliable, actionable emissions insights.”

Airmo said last month it will work with EnduroSat to put its technology in orbit next year.