What Does The Future Hold For SpaceTech?
The space industry has become one of the fastest growing technology sectors, with annual investments surpassing $3B this year. While there are a few obvious high-profile names bringing global attention to this industry, most of what’s happening is hiding quietly behind the scenes.
A decade ago, building a venture in the space industry wasn’t an option for anyone not named Jeff or Elon. Today, it’s a completely different story. While you can now launch a satellite for under $1M (compared to $100M in earlier years), much of the growth in the sector has nothing to do with getting to Mars.
As consumers, we are accessing this technology every single day — we just don’t know it. If you’re using Google Maps and Uber, you’re relying on space tech during seemingly monotonous tasks and routines. But, there’s nothing boring about how much easier satellite technology has made our lives. From daily conveniences like mapping and monumental advances like disaster relief, the advances in space tech are quite literally reshaping our world.
So what does the future hold for this emerging and growing industry? Our Space 2.0 cohort is currently underway, and the technologies these companies are developing under the space umbrella is nothing short of genius. Let’s take a look at what they’re up to.
Here are 6 emerging space tech companies to watch. They are currently enrolled in Space 2.0 and have big things in the works!
Infinite Composites Technologies (ICT) designs, develops, and manufactures
advanced composite pressure vessels and structures. ICT was founded in 2010
to revolutionize composite pressure vessel technology. This company is headquartered in Tulsa, OK and has already secured $3.3M in funding.
Kepler Communications develops next-generation satellite communication
technologies and provides global data backhaul services for wideband and
IoT applications. This Canadian company is based in Toronto and has already raised $21M in funding.
Metamaterial Technologies Inc. (MTI) is a smart materials and photonics
company specializing in metamaterial research, nanofabrication, and
computational electromagnetics. MTI's pioneering technology platform enables
them to manipulate light for a variety of outcomes. Based in the small city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, the second Canadian company of the group has secured $17.9M in funding.
RBC Signals is a satellite communication technology company. It
aggregates the unused capacity of existing satellite ground stations around the
world. They provide a clean and simple way for ground station operators to
increase the revenue-generating potential of their systems. Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, the company has raised $1.5M in funding.
Slingshot Aerospace is a cutting-edge leader in providing the next generation
of signal processing AI. Their solutions and geospatial insights allow customers
worldwide to make valuable decisions utilizing Earth Observation data and other ancillary data sources. The company is headquartered in El Segundo, CA and has secured $3.4M in funding.
Tacit.io was founded to author, deploy, and enable intelligent software on
industrial mobile computing devices and emerging wearable headsets. Their ultimate goals are to simplify tasks to improve productivity and to capture tribal or undocumented
institutional knowledge of front-line workers. The new company is based in Sunnyvale, CA and is still in the early stages of working through their Early Access Program that opened in September.
The future is bright for these 6 companies, and we’re thrilled to see what their technologies can bring to government and the entire globe.