Hydrosat, the geospatial data and analytics company,
announces a new Seed Round raising $10M to create its thermal infrared satellite constellation.
Today’s funding brings Hydrosat’s total capital raised to over $15M. The oversubscribed venture
round was led by OTB Ventures, a leading European venture firm with a dedicated space
investment vehicle, OTB Space Program I. Freeflow Ventures, Cultivation Capital, Santa
Barbara Venture Partners, and Expon Capital also participated in the round.
Hydrosat began as a satellite company monitoring the water cycle to rapidly detect
environmental stress brought about by climate change. Recent climate disasters, ranging from
drought on the West Coast to flash floods on the East Coast of the United States, illustrates the
growing importance of this technology as the world’s major governments meet this month for the
United Nations COP26 Climate Change Conference.
“Water is fundamental to life on Earth, especially to agriculture and industry” says Hydrosat
CEO, Pieter Fossel. “However, Earth’s freshwater resources are under stress brought on by
the collision of climate change and population growth. “Mega droughts, such as the one
currently impacting the western and central United States lead to declines in crop yields.
Meanwhile wildfires and environmental damage create further economic loss with devastating
impact to human life. With this investment we will be able to assess the temperature of the
earth’s surface at high resolution on a daily basis to help organizations make more informed and
timely decisions.”
Hydrosat measures water stress through land surface temperature. Like perspiration in humans,
plants cool themselves through evaporation. When plants are stressed or lack sufficient water,
they halt the release of water vapor, and their temperature rises. Hydrosat can detect plant
stress from this change in temperature weeks earlier than it can be detected using current
commercial earth observation systems. This new funding will accelerate the delivery of the
company’s global land surface temperature product.
“Hydrosat produces extremely powerful data for monitoring climate risks and for our food and
water supply,” said Adam Niewinski, Co-Founder and General Partner at OTB. “There is
nothing else like it on the market. One of the things that most excited us about Hydrosat is their
robust analytics capability, even before a single spacecraft is in orbit.”
OTB is no stranger to satellite remote sensing, with a dedicated space investment vehicle, OTB
Space Program I, and having been a major investor in ICEYE, the radar satellite constellation.
“OTB is a great partner because of their deep sector expertise in satellite remote sensing and
geospatial analysis” said Fossel. “Hydrosat is doing in infrared what ICEYE has done in radar.
We could not be happier partnering with OTB to make that a reality.”
Hydrosat’s pathfinder mission, VanZyl-1, is being developed in partnership with thermal infrared
domain experts. The team includes ABB, a leading global technology company who have
previously delivered optical systems for NASA, the European, Canadian and Japanese Space
Agencies, and GHGSat. For calibration and validation support, Hydrosat has partnered with the Rochester Institute of Technology Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science Digital
Imaging and Remote Sensing Laboratory (RIT). The RIT team has experience supporting
calibration and validation of thermal infrared imagers for NASA’s Landsat series of satellites.
Hydrosat’s payloads will be integrated with a Loft Orbital satellite bus and launch on a SpaceX
Falcon 9 rocket.
