Allied Minds has reinvested in spectral satellite imaging company Orbital Sidekick to help fuel the latter's sales, development and product plans.

Commercialisation firm Allied Minds has committed $2.5m to a $16m round for US-based hyperspectral satellite imaging provider Orbital Sidekick. The round was led by Singaporean government-owned investment firm Temasek and was also backed by early-stage venture fund 11.2 Capital, Energy Innovation Capital and Syndicate 708. Allied Minds’ investment includes the conversion of an earlier option agreement. Founded in 2016, Orbital Sidekick plans to use satellites to capture highly-detailed images of ground objects such as infrastructure. The company has built machine-learning software that detects spectral properties, like chemistry or energy composition, from each pixel in its satellite images, a technique called spectral object detection. The funding will go to sales and launching Orbital’s product offering, in addition to adding two satellites to its network. Allied Minds supplied $3.5m to Orbital Sidekick in 2018 in a round that a regulatory filing suggests raised $4.7m in total. Another filing states Orbital had already secured $100,000 in equity funding the previous year. – This article was updated on April 14, 2021, after Orbital Sidekick confirmed Energy Innovation Capital and Syndicate 708 as participants in the round.

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