Infostellar, a Japanese satellite Ground-Segment-as-a-Service (GSaaS) provider, has raised ¥500M ($4.32 million) in the Final Close of the company’s Series B financing round — this is in addition to ¥700M ($6.04 million) raised in the First Close in October 2021, completing Infostellar’s Series B round of funding, with a total new investment of ¥1.2B ($10.36 million).
In addition to the increased investment from an existing shareholder, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital No. 7 Investment Limited Partnership (Mitsubishi UFJ Capital Co., Ltd.), the final close included new investors Pavilion Capital PTE. LTD. under Temasek Holdings; a Singaporean governmental investment company, ICMG Co-Creation Fund No. 1 Investment Limited Partnership (ICMG Partners Co., Ltd.); and QB No.2 Investment Limited Partnership (QB Capital LLC, and NCB Venture Capital Co., Ltd.), raising a total of ¥500M ($4.32 million). As a result, the total amount of funds raised to date is ￥2.44B ($21.06 million).
Infostellar’s vision is “We connect Earth and Space to empower the future” and the firm’s mission is “Be the most effective enabler of space business by providing the best access to satellite services” to achieve this vision. In order to provide total ground segment services to all satellite operators for the growth of their space business, Infostellar will focus on the following areas with the funds raised in the Series B round.
- Expansion of communication area Infostellar will continue to connect ground stations to our StellarStation “network of networks” cloud based platform in order to expand the coverage area. Including integrating with AWS Ground Station, with whom we partnered with in June 2021. Infostellar aims to have more than 20 ground stations available to our satellite operator clients via StellarStation in the early part of 2022.
- Enhanced regulatory compliance and license acquisition support for satellite operators We have received a lot of requests from our Satellite operator clients to support their regulatory compliance and license acquisitions, which are required before a satellite can be launched. We aim to strengthen our team and systems to enhance the range of our services and capacity to support our clients.
- Launch of ground station hosting service in Japan We have been receiving needs to set up a ground station in Japan for communication in Japan. In order to meet this need, we will prepare a site in Japan and aim to launch a hosting service by the end of 2022.
- Business expansion to the U.S. We are receiving an increasing number of inquiries from overseas satellite operators about our ground station network. In order to strengthen our service offerings, especially in North America, we will launch a U.S. corporation by the end of 2022.
- Strengthen human resource recruitment and organizational capabilities In order to implement the above measures, we will accelerate the hiring of Business Development, Software Development and Operations teams and strengthen the organization.
