Fleet Space Technologies has completed its heavily oversubscribed $50 million Series C fundraising round led by Australasian venture capital firm Blackbird.
The company says this latest capital raising comes as a result of Fleet Space’s ‘success’ in commercialising its revolutionary ExoSphere satellite-based mineral exploration technology worldwide.
Fleet Space notes the company’s valuation has now doubled to $350 million.
Commenting on the Series C capital raise, Fleet Space Technologies Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and co-founder Flavia Tata Nardini says: “This exceptional growth in revenue, coupled with our robust customer acquisition, has been a driving force behind our successful Series C round.
The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has pointed out that the world will need hundreds of new mines to meet the critical minerals demand required for the energy transition. We are believers that space-enabled data in exploration will allow the search for critical minerals to speed up so much that we will be able to reach humanity’s target for net zero.
“With this capital, we aim to map the subsurface of Earth and find the deposits that are needed with a much lower environmental impact”
With this capital, we aim to map the subsurface of Earth and find the deposits that are needed with a much lower environmental impact.”
With the company’s new funding, Fleet Space will expand its global presence, particularly in North America, building on proven demand across every continent. Fleet Space also aims to become an essential partner for the world’s most progressive exploration companies and enable them to locate critical transition minerals faster and with greater accuracy.
Additionally, the funding will support the development of new technology enabled by Machine Learning and AI, alongside new strategic product lines on a global scale, through an expanded constellation of satellites.
Fleet Space shares that this is a testament to the company exceeding growth expectations and moving through the critical growth milestones set out in its oversubscribed Series B round, completed in 2021.
The company seeks to extend beyond Earth, as it aims to leverage cutting-edge techniques to scan the Moon and Mars, enabling responsive exploration and unlocking extraterrestrial resources that were once out of reach.
In March this year, this news service reported Atlantic Lithium (ASX:A11) had started auger drilling at its Ewoyaa Lithium Project, as part of its 2023 exploration and resource drilling program in Ghana, West Africa. The company engaged Fleet Space to complete a passive seismic geophysical survey, using its Exosphere solution, over the Ewoyaa footprint looking for potential concealed pegmatites.
In November 2022, Mining.com.au also reported Core Lithium (ASX:CXO) signed a 12-month contract with Fleet Space Technologies for the space company to provide its ExoSphere satellite-based mineral exploration services.
The partnership was effective from May 2023 and follows Core Lithium’s recent opening of the Finniss Lithium Mine and a capital raising with a strong focus on exploring its lithium projects. It also follows the completion of successful large-scale survey trials at Core’s Finniss Project.
The contract will see Fleet’s pioneering satellite-based mineral exploration system, ExoSphere, deployed across Core’s tenements in the Northern Territory. Core was also successful in applying for the co-funding of a tenement-wide deployment of ExoSphere at its Shoobridge Project in 2022, under round 15 of the Geophysics and Drilling Collaborations program.
ExoSphere sustainably accelerates critical mineral exploration by scanning the Earth with advanced, low-impact sensors, Geodes, connected to the cloud through Fleet’s low-power satellite network.
Since the launch of Exosphere — the company’s ‘ground-breaking’ product — it has achieved a milestone of reaching $28 million in contracted revenues within a year, servicing customers in every continent of the world.
Fleet Space Technologies is an Australian space company with a mission to connect Earth, Moon, and Mars and is revolutionising the mineral exploration, defence, and space exploration sectors through its products and connectivity solutions.
Images: Fleet Space Technologies
