Kepler Communications announced today that is has closed an oversubscribed US$60 million Series B round of financing bringing its total funds raised to US$90 million and which will enable expansion into the US.
The Series B round of funding was led by Tribe Capital and includes Canaan Partners and several other new investors. The company said existing investors IA Ventures and Costanoa Ventures also participated.
The funds raised in this round will allow Kepler to move forward with expansion plans and the company announced some of those plans.
Mina Mitry, CEO and Co-Founder said in a press release, “this new funding not only allows us to continue our revenue growth using existing satellites, but also enables us to introduce new services in support of our growing customer base. We are pleased to have Tribe Capital leading the round given the deep domain expertise they’ve built through investments like Relativity Space.”
Kepler will continue to iterate its satellites and increase the size of their current constellation. The company has three demonstration satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) along with 12 of its next-generation satellites known as GEN 1. The company says it can now manufacture 10 satellites per month from its downtown Toronto manufacturing facility. The company recently received a $3.8 million repayable contribution from FedDev to expand production.
Wen Cheng Chong, CTO and Co-Founder, added that “building the internet in space is the guiding mission at Kepler. Our next generation of satellites will expand our coverage beyond Earth providing internet connectivity to people, devices, satellites and more in orbit. There is a growing need to get data generated in space back to earth, and this is a need Kepler is uniquely qualified to address.”
The company also plans to expand its employee base from 80 to 150 people by the end of the year and open a US office. The company had already opened a UK office in 2018.
Mina Mitry commented on the US expansion saying, “We are seeing increasing demand for our products and services within the US market and by creating a local entity we will be better positioned to provide value, and boots-on-the-ground support for current and future customers in the US. The US market is obviously a particularly important one for us, especially as we develop the internet in space due to the high level of innovative space activity from private entities.”
Kepler was to have had another two satellites launch later this month but an issue with their space tug provider Momentus has delayed that plan. Kepler is working on getting these two satellites launched at a later date this year.