WASHINGTON — HawkEye 360, a commercial operator of remote-sensing satellites, announced Oct. 18 it has secured an additional $10 million in an extension of its Series D-1 investment round. The funding extension brings the total Series D-1 amount to $68 million and total capital raised to $378 million.
Based in Herndon, Virginia, HawkEye 360 uses radio-frequency data collected by satellites to geolocate electronic emissions and draw insights.
Investors for the round extension include Lockheed Martin Ventures, the venture arm of Lockheed Martin Corp., and company insiders.
As part of this investment, HawkEye 360 and Lockheed Martin have signed a strategic cooperative agreement to develop remote sensing solutions for government and commercial customers, said HawkEye 360 CEO John Serafini.
“Lockheed Martin’s leadership as a system integrator and their signal processing capability will expand what HawkEye 360 can accomplish as we work together to make the world a safer and more secure place,” Serafini said in a statement.
Synergies with Lockheed Martin
Chris Moran, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Ventures, said the agreement resulted from “synergies between our programmatic analytical expertise and HawkEye 360’s commercial RF data generating constellation.”
The new funding will be used to develop new satellites and analytics tools to extract value from the large amount of RF data being collected, HawkEye 360 said. The company currently has 21 satellites in orbit and plans to move to a new Block 3 satellite architecture.
Defense and intelligence agencies are HawkEye 360’s main customers. It has some civil and commercial business tracking illegal fishing and deforestation.
“One of the tenets we set the company up with was to focus on where the money is. The money in remote sensing is, ultimately, in defense and intelligence,” Serafini told SpaceNews last month. “If you can’t service those customers, you’re not going to exist as a company.”
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the company has provided services tracking sources of GPS and other radio-frequency interference. Serafini said the conflict has highlighted the importance of both commercial remote sensing capabilities in general as well as the need to work closely with the users of the data.
