Skybox Blog
SKYBOX IMAGING RAISES $18M IN SERIES B FINANCING
Mountain View, California – July 26, 2010: Skybox Imaging, a startup bringing a Silicon Valley approach to aerospace design, today announced the successful completion of its Series B financing of $18 million from Silicon Valley investors including Khosla Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners.
Skybox is seeking to fundamentally change the way satellite imagery is used in the daily lives of businesses, consumers, and governments. By using modern commercial electronics to build its satellites rather than custom, mil-spec components, Skybox will economically scale to be the world’s most timely imaging constellation.
This past year, Skybox Imaging became the 5th US company ever to be granted a NOAA license from the US Government to operate a high-resolution imaging satellite, has developed a plan to launch its first constellation of two satellites by 2013, and has recruited a world-class team from the intersection of the Silicon Valley, Aerospace, and Intelligence communities.
“Commercial customers, including those in the oil-and-gas, mining, financial trading, agriculture and forestry industries, are hungry for more timely, high-resolution images from space,” said Skybox Imaging’s CEO, Dan Berkenstock. “There simply aren’t enough satellites out there now to provide the kind of daily, or even hourly updates that companies need. Skybox will be able to reliably deliver more timely, high-resolution imagery and video that meets the needs of commercial customers,” Berkenstock said.
About Khosla Ventures
Khosla Ventures offers venture assistance, strategic advice and capital to entrepreneurs. The firm helps entrepreneurs extend the potential of their ideas in breakthrough scientific work in clean technology areas such as solar, battery, high efficiency engines, lighting, greener materials like cement, glass and bio-refineries for energy and bioplastics, and other environmentally friendly technologies as well as traditional venture areas like the Internet, computing, mobile and silicon technology arenas. Vinod Khosla founded the firm in 2004 and was formerly a General Partner at Kleiner Perkins and founder of Sun Microsystems. Khosla Ventures is based in Menlo Park, California. For more information visit www.khoslaventures.com
About Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners is a global investment group with offices in Silicon Valley, Cambridge, Mass., New York, Mumbai and Herzliya, Israel. One of the oldest venture-capital practices in the United States, Bessemer has partnered as an active, hands-on investor in Ciena (CIEN), LinkedIn (LNKD), Postini, Shriram EPC, Skype, Staples, VeriSign and Yelp. More than 100 Bessemer-funded companies have gone public on exchanges in the U.S., the U.K., India and Canada. To learn more, visit www.bvp.com and follow the firm on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bessemervp and Twitter at http://twitter.com/bessemervp.
About Skybox Imaging
Skybox Imaging is a commercial remote sensing startup seeking to revolutionize access to information that describes the daily activity on our planet. Founded in 2009 and backed by leading venture firms, Skybox is designing, manufacturing, and operating the world’s first coordinated constellation of high-resolution microsatellites in order to deliver timely imagery and video of any spot in the world. Skybox headquarters is in Mountain View, California. For more information, please visit www.skyboximaging.com and follow Skybox Imaging on Twitter.