Urban Sky, which describes itself as “a stratospheric platform company”, has closed a $30 million Series B investment round for its rapidly deployable Microballoon technology.

 

The funding will be used to develop and commercialise its products for using the stratosphere tactically for military and commercial customers.

The payloads of the balloons enable high-resolution, persistent data monitoring above wide areas. To support this, the company’s tech stack includes control software to navigate the balloons and also AI-derived forecasting and autonomous flight control systems.

Funding
The funding round was led by Altos Ventures, with participation from New Legacy Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, Catapult Ventures, Lavrock Ventures, New Stack Ventures, TenOneTen, DA Ventures (a Denver Angels Affiliate), Union Labs VC, and Techstars.

“We continue to believe that Urban Sky represents a category-defining business led by an exceptional and uniquely experienced founding team,” said Alex Wong, Partner at New Legacy Ventures and Urban Sky Board Member.

“We have a strong conviction that this Series B financing will enable an exponential expansion of valuable data and insights from the stratosphere, where Urban Sky is positioned as an industry leader.”

Military
The system provides military users with what the company says amounts to a “personally deployable satellite”. The balloons can then rapidly enable intelligence and data gathering missions.

As well as such defence uses, Urban Sky highlights possible commercial applications, such as real-time environmental or wildfire monitoring. Indeed, the company was using its technology to provide constant IR imaging of the LA wildfires recently.

The fires demonstrated an ability, it said, to produce heat maps with infrared data 100x finer than publicly available satellite data sources like MODIS and VIIRS.

Its “Hot Spot” system – developed in partnership with NASA and the U.S. Air Force – uses a long-wave infrared (LWIR) imaging payload and satellite connectivity. This was able to deliver real-time, high-resolution data without impacting lower-altitude airborne firefighting operations.

Pictured below is ~3m resolution Long-Wave-Infrared (LWIR) data captured above the Palisades Fire from an Urban Sky Microballoon.

Long-Wave-Infrared (LWIR) data captured above the Palisades Fire from an Urban Sky Microballoon

Urban Sky
The Denver, Colorado-based startup was founded in 2019 and its first commercial product is the rapidly deployable stratospheric Microballoon (mHAB).

These can operate at altitudes above 60,000 feet for multiple days, says the company. It claims this unlocks “unprecedented access to the stratosphere – a domain between aircraft and satellites that represents one of the last untapped frontiers for defense and commercial applications”.

“Our team has already made huge strides to pioneer humanity’s routine and easy access to the stratosphere and the value locked within it,” said Andrew Antonio, CEO and co-founder of Urban Sky. “This new capital will allow us to accelerate the development of our technology and product portfolio to make an even greater impact on our customers’ missions.”

Low Earth (LEO) and geosynchronous (GEO) orbits are becoming increasingly congested and contested. Correspondingly, craft in “Very Low Earth Orbit” (VLEO) can operate in a relatively unimpaired environment. This is what the space infrastructure company Redwire has previously claimed.

Project Loon
Back in 2021, Alphabet called time on Project Loon, which was also developing balloon technology. This, however, was to provide Internet connectivity, so it was focused on consumer services

focused than defence oriented

At the time, its CEO Alastair Westgarth highlighted, however, that Loon had proved some useful technology:

“We found ways to safely fly a lighter-than-air vehicle for hundreds of days in the stratosphere to anywhere in the world,” says Westgarth, “we built a system for quickly and reliably launching a vehicle size of a tennis court, and we built a global supply chain for an entirely new technology and business.”

The way it worked was that one Loon balloon received an LTE signal from the ground. And then other balloons passed data via millimetre wave connections between each other. Solar power supplied the energy.

Series
Series B funding is typically used to help scale commercial operations, build into new markets, or further refine products.

Before this, Series A would be initial investments to help establish the startup and generate revenues from their business strategy.

Later in the company’s development, Series C would be for more established startups. Those looking to fund significant capital projects or even make acquisitions themselves.