Astranis, the company building the next generation of telecommunication satellites, on Wednesday announced a $250 million Series C financing round, valuing the company at $1.4 billion.
The new funding will be used to significantly expand production of Astranis’s unique microsatellite platform, built to satisfy the significant global demand for affordable broadband. Additionally, Astranis will dramatically accelerate new technology research and development to support its next-generation platforms. That includes the company’s proprietary software-defined radio technology, which increases satellite performance and flexibility, and allows manufacturing at scale, lowering the price point to end-consumers.
Astranis’s satellites can be deployed at a low cost and be built in months, not years. That’s in contrast to traditional satellites that require hundreds of millions of dollars of capital and five or more years to get new capacity online. The smaller size of Astranis’s satellites — just 350 kg, or about 20 times less than traditional satellites — and their deployment into geostationary orbit (GEO) allows Astranis to start providing coverage with just a single MicroGEO satellite and bring capacity online quickly, focusing beams of broadband connectivity right where it’s needed.
John Gedmark, co-founder and CEO, Astranis
Getting connectivity to those who need it the most changes lives in a profound way. It empowers people to take control of their health, education, and economic situation. We’re talking about something that is now absolutely part of the base of the hierarchy of needs.
