Pre-Seed Funding For Long-Endurance, Real-Time, High-Res Earth Intel

Arctus Aerospace announced it raised $2.6 million from Version One Ventures, South Park Commons, gradCapital, and several angel investors in a pre-seed round to accelerate the development of its large, unmanned aircraft intended to fly at 45,000 feet for up to 24 hours.

Arctus said the funding will be deployed to establish one of the deepest full-stack unmanned aircraft manufacturing and engineering capabilities that will be built entirely in-house. The company builds its aircraft, manufacturing, and testing operations at its facility in Bangalore, India.

The aircraft will be capable of carrying a 250-kg / 550 lb payload to provide real-time intelligence. Arctus notes that the high-altitude Earth observation sector has been limited by the high cost of satellites with slow revisit rates. The options within defense high-altitude long-endurance aircraft are prohibitively expensive, far beyond the reach of commercial operators. The company explains that this causes a gap because industries need frequent, high-resolution, on-demand data, but the existing systems are too expensive or operationally rigid.

Arctus Aerospace said in a statement, "Arctus addresses this gap by enabling high-altitude intelligence at $100/hour, making strategic-grade sensing commercially viable for the first time. Imagery that typically costs $10,000 for 500 square kilometres can now be delivered for approximately $500, opening access to real-time, high-resolution intelligence across energy, infrastructure, climate and security applications.”

Shreepoorna S Rao, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Arctus Aerospace said, "Our mission is to eliminate all ground infrastructure required to monitor, inspect or understand the planet on centimetre-level resolution. By flying large unmanned aircraft at high altitudes for long durations, we are building the foundation for true zero-infrastructure Earth intelligence.”

FMI:  arctus.space/