Kapta Space co-founders CTO Adam Bily, left, and CEO Milton Perque, right.

Startup Kapta Space emerged from stealth mode on Friday with plans to develop advanced spaceborne electronically-steered, radar-based imaging technology. 

Milton Perque, formerly of Echodyne, and Adam Bily, formerly of Apple and Astranis, founded the company in 2023. Kapta Space has raised a $5 million seed round, led by MetaVC Partners, a metamaterials-focused VC firm, with participation from Entrada Ventures and Blue Collective. The company is based in Seattle. 

The team has developed a metamaterials-based radar imaging device that it claims offers improved electronic scanning compared to other spaceborne active electronically steered arrays (AESAs). Kapta Space said this technology will enable persistent geospatial imagery for Earth observation (EO) and ground target tracking modalities for defense missions.

Kapta’s technology uses synthetic aperture radar (SAR), but the company says it goes beyond EO imagery and analytics and can be used for more sophisticated defense missions. 

“What we see is more of an advanced, multi-mission spaceborne radar sensor that would enable many of the critical defense missions that don’t exist at scale, like GMTI [Ground Moving Target Indication]; missions of tracking slow moving ground targets from space,” CEO Perque explained in a release. “That’s not possible with a low-cost, mechanically pointed system. To enable these critical missions, radar sensors are required to be sophisticated, yet cost-efficient. This is incredibly challenging, and it has never existed in space at scale.”

In 2023, the company received a $1.8 million Direct to Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant to build a version of its electronically steered antennas for spaceborne radar.