Statkraft Ventures leads Hydrosat's $20m Series A building a thermal infrared dataset to monitor and fight climate change
Hydrosat, the climate tech company, announced $20 million in new funding including a $15M Series A round and more than $5M in non-dilutive funding to aid in the growth and development of its constellation of satellites and analytics to measure water stress and climate impact. This latest round of funding was led by Statkraft Ventures and included new investors Blue Bear Capital and Hartree Partners, all three firms focusing on climate tech. This round included participation from OTB Ventures, Freeflow Ventures, Cultivation Capital, Techstars, Santa Barbara Venture Partners, Expon Capital, Hemisphere Ventures.
“Climate change is humanity’s most pressing issue and Hydrosat is addressing it head-on with satellite data. The societal need for insights on water stress and climate are only growing and that drives a significant market need for space-based insights.” said Pieter Fossel, CEO & Co-Founder of Hydrosat.
In recent years, moisture stress accelerated by climate change has disrupted our global food supply. Extreme weather events like megadroughts, wildfires, major storms and flooding threaten both communities and the economy. Effectively monitoring these threats through thermal infrared data has been limited due to infrequency and coarse image resolution. Hydrosat delivers the only continuous thermal monitoring capability that provides frequent and high-resolution data to track water stress events as they occur. Real time imagery data provides government agencies, agribusiness, insurance companies and emergency response teams the critical insights they need to respond in real time.
“Having recently expanded our investment scope to include climate tech we are happy to announce Hydrosat as our first investment in this space. Surface temperatures are increasing and water scarcity is a pressing problem. Hydrosat will significantly improve insights and decision-making for those in charge by combining high-resolution thermal imagery with advanced analytics. The company’s technology enables the optimization of irrigation, fertilizer usage, wildfire and drought prediction, water resource management, and urban heat mapping capabilities. These are critical for the safety and well-being of communities around the globe. Hydrosat customers are uniquely positioned to manage and protect their precious resources much more efficiently,” said Alexander Kueppers, Managing Director, Statkraft Ventures.
"Cost-effective, continuous thermal infrared, at a useful resolution, is one of the holy grails for effective land management, efficient and responsible agricultural development, and precision climate analytics. Blue Bear is excited to back the Series A round and support Hydrosat as they work toward a better-informed, data-driven planetary future," says Vaughn Blake, Partner, Blue Bear Capital.
The new investment brings Hydrosat’s total funding to date to over $35M. Since Hydrosat’s initial funding announcement in 2021, the company has demonstrated sustained growth and industry-leading service temperature data sets. Recently, Hydrosat secured a license agreement with National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to operate a private remote sensing space system, and signed a $1.2 million contract through AFWERX, the innovation arm of The Department of the United States Air Force, to adapt its surface temperature data to the mission needs of the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC).
Hydrosat also piloted a proprietary Crop Yield Forecast with an exclusive set of users that include Fortune 500 agriculture and food processing companies in the United States and Europe and outperformed the accuracy rates of commercial yield forecasts to demonstrate how infrared imagery and machine learning deliver an advantage.