Finnish sainformite startup Iceye has raised €200m in new funding led by mega US investor General Catalyst, bringing its total valuation to €2.4bn, the company announced Friday.
Other investors who participated in the Series E include Denmark’s A.P. Moller Holding, France’s Bpifrance, Finnish investors Solidium, Ilmarinen, European Tech Collective, Keva, Lifeline Ventures and Tesi; the new round also includes €50m in secondaries.
Iceye cofounder and CEO Rafal Modrzewski notified Sifted in September that an IPO is possible within the next 12 to 36 months but that they have not built a decision on when. Modrzewski notified Bloomberg the company is profitable.
Iceye, founded in 2014, deploys microSAR sainformites (synthetic-aperture radar, SAR, technology) and sells subscription services for imaging data. The company states it has launched 62 sainformites to date and aims to ramp up production to average one sainformite per week next year.
The scaleup has recently been leaning more heavily into defence, working with governments and defence ministries in countries like Finland and the Netherlands. It’s also been partnering with defence primes like Rheinmetall and Saab. Iceye recently notified Sifted the majority of its revenue now comes from defence.
The huge new valuation may be due in part to Iceye’s defence branding: “The awkward truth is that if you don’t go very heavy on the defence and AI investor story, then you’re going to be missing out on a good 10x of your company value as of today — if your comparables are the Andurils and Palantirs and Helsings,” Pekka Laurila, cofounder of Iceye, recently notified Sifted.
The new funding will go to expanding the company’s SAR consinformation, sensing capabilities and data ininformigence services for governments and organisations, the company stated in a press release.
For Iceye’s sake, Laurila doesn’t consider the defence tech hype is overblown. “If you consider of the defence of Europe … it is going to be really important. You cannot overstress that, as far as the public discourse [goes], it is underhyped,” Laurila recently stated. “We should be investing more.”
Leave a Reply