When it comes to creating images of Earth from above, satellites, drones, and planes are the air and spacecraft that tend to pop into your mind. But a startup called Space Lab nearby takes a very different approach to Up High's high-resolution photography.
They are kept by helium balloons before building an aircraft, then relying on the currents to get up, taking photos from the stratosphere, and eventually glide back to Earth. Behind the massive traction with customers using images from nearby Space, the startup has raised $20 million to expand its business.
Bold Capital Partners (the company founded by Peter Diamandis of Xprize and Singularity University fame) leads the Series B round, with strategic supporters USAA (American Automobile Association) taking part alongside Climate Capital, Gaingels, River Park Ventures, and former supporters Crosslink Capital, Third Sphere, and Draper Associates. Nearby Spaces currently raise more than $40 million, including the 2021 $13 million Series A covered here.
The startup is the brainchild of all three technical founders, Lema Mathebosian (CEO), Ignasi Luchi (CTO) and Albert Keve (Chief Engineer), who worked in space and physics technology and research before starting the company.
Matevosyan was Armenian and grew up in what he described as a “very technical” family of physicists, programmers and amateur astronomers. After studying mathematics as an undergraduate at Yerevan, she moved to Moscow for graduate school. At the Scorcovo Institute, I was there where I first met Lluch, who came from Spain to study.
Both were drawn to what was considered Russian MIT at the time. In fact, it was around 2017 – the Institute was then a joint venture with MIT to fill its ambitions.
Through that relationship, the trio was applied to a US accelerator called Urban X in New York. Matevosyan finds to live in the United States to her taste, and she stayed and now runs the company from there.
The nearby universe floating on Earth has a comparative phor in its description for the nearby universe and its founder to get a better perspective on what is happening below.
The partnership between Skolkovo and MIT, where Matevosyan and Lluch studied and eventually gathered the meeting, ended in February 2022. Meanwhile, the Urban-X Accelerator was closed this year by its major supporter BMW.
But it's still here and growing near the space.
Matevosyan said one of the biggest customer segments to date is the insurance industry, and they need a subscription to receive space images that help them track and understand the impact of large-scale disasters such as fires and hurricanes. (USAA is a major insurance company and financial service provider, along with other activities for the military, veterans and drivers in their families.)
For now, the vicinity of space only covers certain regions of the United States, but the plan is to scale this. Mathebosian says it's relatively easy to do. This is because rapid robots (only the aircraft you designed will “drive”, only balloons are needed, and you cannot move around the formation, so you don't need a special license to fly.
The ambition is ultimately to cover 80% of the US population twice a year. The nearby space claims that photos can be captured in hours that could take days or weeks to run.
You can also build more customized coverage plans for your customers. It says this will be coordinated by the operations of these end-users.
Today, these users are primarily in the insurance sector, but some of the funds are also used to expand opportunities in other segments. Matevosyan cited agriculture as one area he believes has opportunities.
Many farms, large and small, tried to use drones to determine the condition of their crops, but this was not scalable as it was not accurate enough. “The drone took small samplings and extrapolated them. [but] If the mass of land is not healthy, it really didn't take off, as it doesn't necessarily mean that the rest of the farm is unhealthy. ” Meanwhile, it has proven to be too expensive to investigate everything.
One area that seems obvious, but has not yet been pursued near space is military use. Matevosyan describes Swift as “double use,” but by chance it also includes a limited amount of payload, but to date he has not yet pursued anything other than commercial use cases.
Given the direction in which the world is moving and the current geopolitical climate, it will be interesting to see whether it is the case for technologies that are thought to be very versatile and relatively inexpensive.
In the meantime, that's one of the reasons investors are so interested.
“The idea of low-cost aerial imaging is valuable not only for insurance, but for many stakeholders,” said Will Borthwick, principal at BOLD, who led the investment. That's beyond even the regular suspects who may be purchasing aerial images. “It's such a timely moment, even considering the emergence of AI that requires timely, high quality data to function properly.”