Spain’s Xoople has raised a $130 million Series B to develop Earth maps for AI

The data industry has argued for years that the private sector needs their products, but the real reaction has come from government buyers. Now, with the wisdom to create advanced business intelligence, one Spanish entrepreneur is trying to become a source of real business facts.

Hoople (pronounced as “zoople’) is building a constellation of satellites to collect real-time data focused on deep learning models. The startup was founded in 2019 and has spent the past seven years building its technology around data collected by government aircraft, and integrating with cloud providers.

CEO and co-founder Fabrizio Pironini told TechCrunch that the company has closed a $130 million Series B round led by Nazca Capital. Other investors include MCH Private Equity, CDTI (a technology development fund backed by the Spanish government), Buenavista Equity Partners, and Endeavor Catalyst.

The startup also announced Monday a deal with US space and defense contractor L3Harris Technologies to begin building sensors for the Xoople plane, which is designed to collect “a list of objects that can be two times larger than existing systems,” Pirondini told TechCrunch.

L3Harris has developed the most advanced recording equipment for the commercial market. However, Pirondini could not share details about the satellites, no matter how many the company plans to build, except that the sensors collect optical data. Those systems are inexpensive, and the company continues to raise funds to support its overall development.

Pirondini declined to share the value of his company after the fundraising period, other than to say “we’re in unicorn territory.” The company has raised $225 million in total.

The company’s focus on data quality is the main differentiator. However, Xoople is entering a crowded space with more serious competitors, including Vantor, Planet, BlackSky, and Airbus in Europe, which are already operating satellites in orbit and creating AI-based datasets.

Xoople’s twist is its focus on business platforms.

“Our business model is about putting our data and our solutions directly into their environment so they can provide these services to their customers,” said Pirondini.

Pirondini explained the work cases, including government agencies to follow the transport network and damage to natural disasters, agribusiness to monitor the health of crops, or large companies to monitor construction projects or supply chains.

Aravind Ravichandran, CEO of Earth observation sector consultancy TerraWatch Spacetold TechCrunch that Xoople’s decision to plan its distribution strategy before it owns its data is interesting. Currently, it relies on publicly available data, such as that collected by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 spacecraft.

“They put in distribution pipelines before they had their own data – going into Microsoft and Esri, two platforms that businesses, government and many GIS consumers already have, but they don’t have EO data,” Ravichandran said. “Google’s leadership in geospatial AI models is the benchmark by which they can be measured.”

It is not clear how Xoople will work between providing raw data and developing its own analysis tools, but Pirondini hopes to create “Earth’s System of Record,” a project that he hopes will eventually involve creating a real world model of AI together with partners.