{"id":121151,"date":"2021-04-14T12:59:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-14T12:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/?p=121151"},"modified":"2021-04-14T12:59:00","modified_gmt":"2021-04-14T12:59:00","slug":"astranis-with-a-new-approach-to-satellite-internet-raises-250-million-from-blackrock-and-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/business\/astranis-with-a-new-approach-to-satellite-internet-raises-250-million-from-blackrock-and-others\/","title":{"rendered":"Astranis, with a new approach to satellite internet, raises $250 million from BlackRock and others"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Astranis, a San Francisco-based company with an alternative approach to providing internet access from satellites, closed new funding to ramp up production.<\/li>\n<li>The company raised $250 million at a $1.4 billion valuation, Astranis CEO John Gedmark told CNBC, in a round led by BlackRock and joined by new investors Baillie Gifford, Fidelity and others.<\/li>\n<li>Astranis&#x27; approach features a small form factor satellite placed in geosynchronous orbit, plus proprietary technology to deliver faster connectivity to specific regions.<\/li>\n<li>&quot;Putting down a focused beam of internet, right on a smaller or medium-sized country area, is just not something that has ever existed before,&quot; Gedmark said.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Astranis, a San Francisco-based company with an alternative approach to providing internet access from satellites, secured new funding to ramp up production.<\/p>\n<p>The company raised $250 million at a $1.4 billion valuation, Astranis CEO John Gedmark told CNBC, in a round led by BlackRock and joined by new investors Baillie Gifford, Fidelity, Koch Strategic Platforms, Monashee Investment Management and Uncorrelated Ventures.<\/p>\n<p>More than a dozen existing investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and Venrock, also contributed. The new round brings Astranis&#x27; total funding to more than $350 million since its founding in 2015.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;This is our growth round. This is what allows us to scale production of our satellite platform. We&#x27;ve developed the satellite\u2014we&#x27;re building our first [commercial] one as we speak,&quot; Gedmark said.<\/p>\n<p>Astranis&#x27; approach features a small form factor satellite, similar to the\u00a0spacecraft\u00a0of\u00a0SpaceX&#x27;s Starlink, combined with proprietary technology and placed in geosynchronous orbit, the operating location of existing players like Viasat.<\/p>\n<p>The company launched a prototype in 2018 and is now finishing work on its first commercial satellite for launch on a SpaceX rocket in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n<p>The satellite will be positioned above Alaska, where Astranis&#x27; first customer\u2014telecommunications provider Pacific Dataport\u2014will use it to triple the data speeds available to people across the state, with service beginning in first quarter 2022.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Putting down a focused beam of internet, right on a smaller or medium-sized country area, is just not something that has ever existed before,&quot; Gedmark said.<\/p>\n<p>Astranis has about 120 employees. In addition to production, Gedmark says the capital will help Astranis hire &quot;very substantially.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We have seen just overwhelming demand. &#8230; We have projects in work in countries all over the globe to bring to bear dedicated satellites for specific customers,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p>The company&#x27;s technical advisory board, chaired by former NASA administrator Dan Goldin, has also given Astranis &quot;many lifetimes of experience to draw upon&quot; and focus on &quot;what types of technologies really move the needle,&quot; Gedmark said.<\/p>\n<h2>A tailored approach<\/h2>\n<p>Astranis&#x27; satellites, at 350 kilograms, are about the size of a dishwasher. Satellites in geosynchronous orbit are about 22,000 miles away from the planet&#x27;s surface\u2014a position which allows the spacecraft to stay above a fixed location, matching the Earth&#x27;s rotation.<\/p>\n<p>Gedmark said that traditional geosynchronous satellites are about 20 times larger, cost hundreds of millions of dollars each, and &quot;often take four or five years to build.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Astranis &quot;had to solve an array of challenges to pack this much punch in a small package,&quot; he said\u2014with surviving the harsh radiation environment of that distant orbit as its biggest hurdle.<\/p>\n<p>Another key element of Astranis&#x27; satellites is software-defined radio technology, which Gedmark noted has been mostly used for U.S. military satellites.<\/p>\n<p>Software-defined radio allows Astranis to digitally tune communication satellites to different frequencies, while traditional satellites &quot;are purely analog&quot; with frequencies &quot;locked in,&quot; he added.<\/p>\n<p>Astranis&#x27; satellites can then be &quot;effectively identical,&quot; but have frequencies dialed in after reaching orbit.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;You can not only make changes on the fly to accommodate for changing market conditions &#8230; [but also] add some extra capacity,&quot; Gedmark said.<\/p>\n<h2>$1 trillion market opportunity<\/h2>\n<p>Gedmark says Astranis has a demand pipeline for &quot;dozens&quot; of satellites, as he sees the world&#x27;s &quot;absolutely insatiable&quot; demand for bandwidth as a &quot;trillion-dollar market opportunity.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Satellite communications is becoming increasingly crowded, especially with multiple projects underway to launch thousands of satellites into low Earth orbit. In addition to SpaceX&#x27;s Starlink, which has over 1,300 satellites in orbit, competing global networks include OneWeb, Amazon&#x27;s Project Kuiper, Telesat, and Lockheed Martin partner Omnispace.<\/p>\n<p>But Gedmark isn&#x27;t worried.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Astranis, plus all our peers, can put up everything in the sky that we can manage to build and launch\u2014and still not fully solve this problem of getting people broadband internet,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p>His company is selling its bandwidth to telecommunications companies and internet service providers. Then, Gedmark said, &quot;it&#x27;s up to them how they want to slice and dice that bulk capacity and price it out to their customers.&quot; He said Astranis hasn&#x27;t seen its terrestrial partners upsell the service, especially given that, &quot;in some of these countries, there&#x27;s only so much that a given consumer is really able or willing to pay.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;For us to deliver on our mission of getting the next 4 billion people online, we would have to get satellite capacity down to a cost far below where it&#x27;s ever been historically,&quot; Gedmark said. &quot;I think, at least in the markets we&#x27;re serving, people are very closely aligned to go and make that happen.&quot;<\/p>\n<h2>Ramping up production<\/h2>\n<p>Astranis will use its new capital to expand its manufacturing space to more than 100,000 square feet to accelerate production.<\/p>\n<p>The planned assembly line is key to the company&#x27;s goal of speeding up the manufacturing process after its first satellite, which Gedmark said will have taken about a year and a half to build.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We are very confident we can get that build time down to just a handful of months,&quot; Gedmark said.<\/p>\n<p>While Astranis is launching its first commercial satellite with SpaceX, Gedmark said the company is now talking to &quot;all the major launch providers&quot; about future missions.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We designed our satellites from day one to be compatible with every major launch vehicle, so we can fly as a rideshare on any of the major rockets that are out there, and some of the newer smaller launchers as well,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p>With a number of space companies recently announcing plans to raise capital by going public through SPAC mergers, Gedmark said Astranis did look at SPACs as an option for this round.<\/p>\n<p>A SPAC or special purpose acquisition company is a shell company that raises money from investors via an initial public offering and then uses the capital to buy a private company and take it public, usually within two years.<\/p>\n<p>For now, &quot;raising funding on the private markets in this quantity was the right move,&quot; Gedmark said, but an IPO is still in Astranis&#x27; plans.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;The market is so huge and, in order to fully go after it, we&#x27;re going to almost certainly go back to the capital markets,&quot; he said. &quot;Going public is a great way to do that.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Enjoyed this article?<br \/>For exclusive stock picks, investment ideas and CNBC global livestream<br \/>Sign up for\u00a0<strong>CNBC Pro<\/strong><br \/>Start your\u00a0free trial now<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2021\/04\/14\/astranis-satellite-internet-raises-250-million-from-blackrock-others.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Astranis, a San Francisco-based company with an<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":121150,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23051],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.7 - 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