Axelspace Holdings, the parent company of nano-satellite developer Axelspace, announced on Friday that it has secured approximately 2.58 billion yen (about $23.6 million US) in a Series C round. Participating invesotors are Sparx Innovation for Future, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Investment, JP Investment, 31 Ventures-Global Brain Growth I LLC (jointly operated by Mitsui Fudosan and Global Brain), Kyocera, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital.

For the satellite startup, this follows their Series A round in September 2015 and Series B round in December 2018. The 31 Ventures-Global Brain-Growth I fund participated in the series B round as well. The latest round brought the company’s total funding sum to date up to more than 7 billion yen (about $64 million US).

Axelspace was spun off from the University of Tokyo and incorporated as a company in 2008. The company has been developing small and inexpensive satellites weighing some 60 kilograms, and launched satellites outsourced from Japanese weather company Weathernews (TSE:4825). Leveraging these low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites, Axelspace plans to collect weather and terrain data to sell to governmental organizations and private businesses. Launching a conventional satellite usually costs tens of millions of dollars, but the cost of a nano-satellites can be reduced to less than $10 million, making it possible to build a constellation system for earth observation with multiple nano-satellites.

In 2015 the company announced AxelGlobe, the earth observation infrastructure which will provide imagery of more than half of the planet’s dry land once every single day. The infrastructure is composed of several nano-satellites, five of which have already been launched, and the goal is to have ten in the future. Since the latest round has paved the way for the initial target of 10 satellites, the company established the AxelGlobe Business Unit to promote the widespread use of satellite data and implement it into many aspects of our society.

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Japanese microsatellite startup Axelspace annoufnced on Friday that it has raised about 2.58 billion yen (about $23 million US) in a series B round. This round was led by “31 Ventures – Global Brain Growth I”, the joint venture fund by Mitsui Fudosan (TSE:8801) and Global Brain, with participation from INCJ (previously known as Innovation Network Corporation of Japan), UTokyo Innovation Platform (investing about $2.7 million US), SBI Investment, and Dai-ichi Life Insurance.

For Axelspace, this follows their series A round back in September of 2015. The latest round brings their total equity funding to-date to 4.5 billion yen (about $40 million US).

Axelspace was spun off from the University of Tokyo and incorporated as a company in 2008. The company has been developing small and inexpensive satellites weighing some 60 kilograms, and launched satellites outsourced from Japanese weather company Weathernews (TSE:4825). Leveraging these low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites, Axelspace plans to collect weather and terrain data to sell to governmental organizations and private businesses.

The company has postponed the launch of its GRUS first satellite which was initially planned back in 2017, but unveiled at this time it will be launched on December 27th by Soyuz from Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia.

In 2015 the company announced AxelGlobe, the earth observation infrastructure which will provide imagery of more than half of the planet’s dry land once every single day. In pursuit of better turning that idea into reality, the company appointed their co-founder and managing director Naoki Miyashita as CTO, and also named their marketing manager and business development expert Yasunori Yamazaki as CBDO (chief business development officer) at this time.