Big bucks for Finnish IoT connectivity and satellites

Kuva Space, an Earth observation company, has thus far deployed three commercial microsatellites equipped with hyperspectral cameras. These can detect and analyse nearly any material on Earth and its condition through its distinct spectral signature.

The technology provides an abundance of monitoring capabilities, including crop types, biodiversity, soil conditions, and marine pollutions among others.

“We are the eyes in the orbit that are looking down and seeing what is happening on the surface of the Earth, with all the bioresources and human activities,” said CEO Jarkko Antila, “and we provide this information to our customers.”

The insights gleaned from Kuva Space's AI-driven analytics platform facilitate the monitoring and forecasting of changes in near-real-time, enabling its customers to make more informed and responsible decisions to improve food security, defence, safety and carbon sequestration credibility.

“The exceptional technology of Kuva Space enables a step change in resource-efficient farming and in monitoring and mitigating the environmental impacts of global food production,” commented Jari Tuovinen, partner at Nordic Foodtech VC, which led the round along with fellow existing investors Voima Ventures.

Kuva plans to double its team size, along with two new satellites set to launch in the coming year.

“With this funding round, we are well-equipped to accelerate our satellite launches, enhance our AI analytics platform with proprietary data, and further our market expansion, particularly in the United States,” Antila added” 

The funding news is one of several positive headlines for the company this year, following its NATO Arctic Challenge Innovation win and a five-million-euro contract from the European Commission to provide hyperspectral data services for the Copernicus programme.

Meanwhile, Tampere-based tech company Wirepas is taking significant steps towards becoming the standard in IoT connectivity after closing its 22-million-US dollar round.

The company is building large-scale and low-cost wireless IoT connectivity for up to four billion devices at once per network.

“Wirepas isn’t just an incremental improvement over existing technologies - this technology is setting a new standard for what’s possible,” Laurence Garrett, partner at Highland Europe, which participated in the round. “By offering a solution that is cost-effective and scalable, Wirepas addresses the two most significant barriers to IoT adoption.”

Earlier this year the company launched the globe’s first non-cellular 5G network – Wirepas 5G Mesh – at Mobile World Congress 2023. This development aims to bring affordable 5G IoT to massive enterprise networks. The solution can be immediately deployed anywhere by anyone and runs autonomously.

“We’ve worked diligently for years to bring an affordable 5G alternative to the market, from contributing to the standard to having the first-ever 5G mesh network demonstrated at MWC,” said Teppo Hemiä, CEO of Wirepas.

A spinout from Tampere University, the company has more than 160 partners for whom it provides smart tracking, smart building, smart manufacturing, and smart metering. More than seven million devices are now connected via Wirepas and the company has offices in Australia, Germany, Finland, France, India and the US.