London, 14 May 2020 – Seraphim Capital today reveals the startups that are participating in Mission 5 of Space Camp, the UK’s first dedicated accelerator for global startups in the SpaceTech industry. Featuring seven new startups, the accelerator programme is being run virtually for the first time.
Launched by Seraphim Capital in 2018, Seraphim Space Camp is a nine-week programme, culminating in an Investor Day on 24th June.
The previous four cohorts (featuring a total of 28 companies) have collectively raised or had offers of £24 million in private investment and £10 million in grants, and have created 83 job opportunities, since completing the programme. They have also gone on to win prestigious awards leading industry events such as SmallSat Symposium 2020 and Paris Space Week.
Mission 5’s cohort includes companies deploying technologies as diverse as quantum computing, AI, Edge computing, Earth observation, SaaS, IoT and machine vision to address challenges across industries such as cybersecurity, Satcomms, finance, maritime, agriculture, environmental monitoring, and autonomous vehicles. The cohort members are:
- Angoka
- Aquark Technologies
- ESpace
- Klepsydra
- Lift Me Off
- Opteran
- Wyvern
Space Camp continues its relationships with key corporate parties and industry bodies including, Airbus, BAE Systems, Dentons, Cyient, Eutelsat, Teledyne, the European Space Agency Business Applications, Satellite Applications Catapult, enabling the participating startups to engage with industry leaders and SPRINT forge partnerships and contacts that have a real impact for them.
Mission 5 will be the first virtual programme, and will include online sessions with experts from the corporate partners, along with a series of workshops and one-to-one mentoring sessions from SpaceTech professionals, advisors, and investors, and pitch practice sessions. The new virtual programme has also attracted some of the world’s leading SpaceTech entrepreneurs, to deliver Keynotes, including the founders of Planet, Orbital Insight, Spire, GomSpace, Kacific and ICEYE.
Seraphim Capital has also recently completed a pre-seed investment into Xona Space, a graduate of Space Camp’s Mission 3 that is building a constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites offering precise and secure Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) service to enable advances in areas such as autonomous vehicles. The investment round of $1 million included two leading seed investors in the US, 1517 Fund and Trucks.VC.
Rob Desborough, Partner at Seraphim Space Fund and CEO of Space Camp, said: “Following the success of the previous four cohorts, we’re incredibly excited to welcome seven new startups for Mission 5. Space Camp alumni have raised or had offers of £24 million, which is a testament to the success of the accelerator programme and the commercial relationships forged during the nine-week period.”
“This programme presents new challenges to the team here, moving all of our sessions into a virtual environment is an incredible feat for the team. We are delighted to continue our work despite the Covid-19 pandemic and help support this latest cohort of incredible companies.”
Full information about the cohort members is below:
Angoka – Embedding Trust in IoT Communication
Angoka ensures the safety and resilience of the machine-to-machine communication of the future. With 1 trillion connected devices by 2025 the cyber security threat will increase exponentially. Angoka’s embedded technology creates trust between devices to allow them to communicate securely over un-trusted networks.
Aquark Technologies – Unlocking the Quantum Future
Aquark Technologies will enable the mass market adoption of quantum technologies into everyday life by creating the first simple, plug-and-play, cold-atom quantum device on the market which will be the size of a match box.
Espace – The Global marketplace for connectivity
ESpace is a B2B digital marketplace for satcom customers to procure and operate multi-provider, multi-band, multi-access connectivity service. ESpace platform can significantly reduce customer cost and risk whilst increasing service agility and reliability.
Klepsydra – Edge computing software for today’s data hungry world.
In today’s increasingly data-hungry world, the bottleneck of adopting IoT solutions is around processing large data. Klepsydra’s edge computing is inspired by the fastest software technologies in the world: high frequency trading and brings to the market faster data processing with lower power consumption for operators in areas such as Satcomms, IoT and Mobility.
LIFT ME OFF – Enabling a safer and more sustainable use of Space
In a world that relies more and more on satellites for connectivity and earth observation, being able to service these networks is going to be critical to sustain and grow the industry. LIFT ME OFF provides an innovative solution with precise and autonomous detection & positioning technologies which enable satellites to assemble, repair and repurpose other satellites in space.
Opteran – Intelligence is natural
Opteran moves beyond today’s Deep Learning AI to re-engineer 600 million years of evolution in insect brains onto a silicon chip. This breakthrough enables machines to see, sense, navigate and make autonomous decisions with a smaller, lighter and more efficient solution that operates at the edge of the network without training.
Wyvern – Earth Insight through Colour
Wyvern’s satellites, with our proprietary hyperspectral imaging technology, will provide readily-available insight at the right resolution and at the right price. This will unlock billions of dollars of increased productivity in the environmental monitoring, agriculture, mining, oil & gas, and forestry markets, while allowing our customers to capitalise on opportunities for optimisation and process-efficiency.
