A satellite data start-up which shrinks file sizes in order to transmit larger quantities of information has won backing from an early investor in SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket-making behemoth.
Sky News understands that The Compression Company will on Friday announce a $3.4m (£m) fundraising led by Long Journey, which has backed some of the world’s biggest technology businesses, including SpaceX, Uber and Anduril.
The Compression Company uses AI-driven compression which runs onboard satellites in order to reduce file sizes by more than 95%, which it says unlocks one of the principal bottlenecks in the delivery of useful data back to Earth.
The volume of data being generated in space is growing at a rapid rate, and is used in areas ranging from climate monitoring and disaster responses to defence, agriculture and logistics.
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More than 5,000 Earth observation (EO) satellites are expected to be launched over the next decade, almost three times the number seen in the previous decade.
Satellites operate with limited bandwidth and only have a short window to transmit data on each pass of a ground station able to receive data.
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Research suggests that just 2% of the data recorded by satellites is transmitted back to Earth, with the rest, delayed, degraded or discarded.
The Compression Company has developed technology enabling bandwidth to be preserved for the highest-value data.
“There have been huge investments in capturing more data from space, but far less attention paid to how that data actually gets back to Earth,” Michael Stanway, co-founder and chief executive of The Compression Company, said.
“Until now, the answer has been to launch more satellites.
“We are taking a different approach – using software to compress data in orbit, so operators can bring down more useful information from existing satellites and unlock more value from the data they’re already capturing.”
Mr Stanway and co-founder Joe Griffith, The Compression Company’s chief technology officer, met while studying neurotechnology at Imperial College London.
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The business, founded last year, was initially backed by Entrepreneur First, the prominent international talent investor, before closing the new round of funding.
“Space has become a data industry, but the ability to move and work with that data has lagged badly behind its generation,” Lee Jacobs, managing partner and founder, Long Journey, said.
“The Compression Company is tackling one of the most fundamental constraints in the ecosystem with a software-first approach that’s both technically ambitious and immediately useful to operators.”
