Axelspace Completes $22.8 Million Series B Round
TOKYO (Axelspace PR) — Axelspace Corporation (HQ: Tokyo, Japan; CEO : Yuya Nakamura) has completed its Series B funding round raising approximately 2.58B JPY (22.8M USD).
The round sees the allocation of new shares to the lead investor 31VENTURES – Global Brain – Growth I Joint Venture (managed by Mitsui Fudosan Co. Ltd. and Global Brain Corporation) and to several other venture capital and corporate investors.
With this critical step Axelspace moves closer to the realization of the new-generation Earth-observation infrastructure AxelGlobe, which will observe the whole planed every day, as announced in December 2015.
The launch of the GRUS satellite, which had been postponed in 2017, will be performed in December 2018. Moreover, the structure of the organization has undergone some changes in association with the funding event.
Accepting institutions
- 31VENTURES – Global Brain – Growth I Joint Venture (Managed by Mitsui Fudosan Co. Ltd. and Global Brain Corporation)
- Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ)
- Innovation Platform for The University of Tokyo (UTokyoIPC)
- SBI Investment Co. Ltd.
- The Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company, Limited
With the funding obtained in this round Axelspace will develop two additional GRUS satellites for launch in 2020. Increasing the number of satellites will lead to more frequent captures of Earth imagery. To tap into this valuable new resource, we are preparing to begin large-scale collaboration with Mitsui Fudosan, also one of the lead investors.
The launch of the first GRUS satellite, which was postponed from 2017 to this year due to hardware improvements, has been fixed. The details of launch are as follows:
Launch Date: December 27, 2018 (subject to weather conditions)
Launch Vehicle: Soyuz-2
Launch Site: Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russian Federation
Orbit: Sun-synchronous orbit, 600km altitude
Launch Service Provider: GK Launch Services (subsidiary of Glavkosmos)
No. of Satellites Launched: 1
The satellite has already reached the launch site and the final preparations for launch are ongoing.
