Spanish company Xoople raises $130 million Series B to map the Earth for artificial intelligence

Space data companies have argued for many years that the private sector needs their products, but the real uptake has been from government buyers. Now, with AI at the forefront of business priorities, one Spanish startup is trying to become the go-to source of ground truth for organizations.

Xoople (pronounced like “zoople”) is developing a constellation of satellites to collect precise data aimed at deep learning models. The startup was founded in 2019 and has spent the past seven years developing its technology stack around data collected by government spacecraft, and integrating with cloud providers.

CEO and co-founder Fabrizio Berondini told TechCrunch that the company has closed a $130 million Series B led by Nazca Capital. Other investors include MCH Private Equity, CDTI (the Spanish government-backed technology development fund), Buenavista Equity Partners and Endeavor Catalyst.

The startup also announced on Monday an agreement with US aerospace and defense company L3Harris Technologies to begin building sensors for the Xoople spacecraft, which are designed to collect “a stream of data that will be two times better than existing monitoring systems,” Berondini told TechCrunch.

L3Harris has built some of the most advanced commercial on-orbit imaging systems. However, Berondini did not share any details about the satellites, nor even how many satellites the company wants to build, except that the sensors will collect optical data. These systems are not cheap, and the company continues to raise capital to fund their full development.

Berondini declined to divulge his company’s valuation beyond its current fundraising round, other than to note that “we’re in unicorn territory.” The company has raised $225 million in total.

The company’s focus on data quality is a key differentiator. However, Xoople enters a crowded space with several mature competitors, including Vantor, Planet, BlackSky, and Airbus in Europe, which already operate satellites in orbit and develop AI-focused data sets.

Where Xoople evolves is its focus on enterprise platforms.

“Our business model is about integrating our data and solutions directly into their ecosystem so they can provide these services directly to their customers,” Berondini said.

Berondini described use cases, including government agencies tracking transportation networks and damage from natural disasters, agricultural companies monitoring crop health, or large corporations monitoring infrastructure projects or supply chains.

Aravind Ravichandran, CEO of Earth observation sector consultancy TerraWatch Space, told TechCrunch that Xoople’s decision to prepare its distribution strategy before it has its own data is interesting. For now, it relies on publicly available data, such as that collected by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 spacecraft.

“They put distribution pipelines in place before they had their own data source — they were integrated into Microsoft and Esri, which are the two platforms where enterprise, government, and most GIS buyers actually live, but neither of which have EO-specific data,” Ravichandran said. “Google’s superiority in geospatial AI modeling is the standard by which it will be measured.”

It’s not clear what balance Xoople will strike between providing raw data and developing its own analysis tools, but Berondini hopes to build an “Earth Record System,” a project he expects to eventually include developing a real-world AI model alongside partners.