Infostellar, a Japanese Ground-Segment-as-a-Service (GSaaS) provider, has completed the first round of their Series B fundraising for a total of ￥700M ($6.16 million) through a third-party allotment of shares with Space Frontier Fund (SPARX Innovation for Future Co., Ltd.), Mitsubishi Corporation, ITOCHU Corporation, Next New Business and Technologies I Limited Partnership (tb innovations Ltd.), and Mizuho Growth Fund No.4 Limited Partnership (Mizuho Capital Co., Ltd.).
With this financing, Infostellar will accelerate the global expansion of their business by forming capital tie-ups with business companies that have global business networks. As a result, the total amount of funds raised to date is ￥1.94 billion ($17.09M USD). Infostellar is continuing discussions with existing and new investors and the final round will close later in 2021.
Daiwa Energy & Infrastructure Co. Ltd., Mitsubishi UFJ Capital VII, Limited Partnership (Mitsubishi UFJ Capital Co., Ltd.), and Mitsubishi HC Capital Inc. are the underwriters of corporate bonds with stock acquisition rights issued in March 2020. Together, with this financing round, they are now new shareholders of the company.
Since raising funds in March 2020, Infostellar has been working on improving the functions of the GSaaS platform StellarStation for commercial use for satellite communications.
In January 2021, Infostellar succeeded in demonstration experiments with satellites in orbit, and since March 2021 Infostellar has been providing downlink services for commercial satellites to European Government agencies.
In June 2021, Infostellar announced a partnership with AWS Ground Station, through which AWS ground stations will be made available to satellite operators through the StellarStation platform.
Based on the funds raised at this time, Infostellar will be able to increase the amount of ground stations that can be provided through the StellarStation platform, enter the US market and grow the number of customers. Infostellar plans to expand its team to strengthen their operational systems and address new market opportunities.