{"id":65608,"date":"2018-03-28T20:35:49","date_gmt":"2018-03-28T12:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/fundraising-big-focus-for-leosat-in-2018\/"},"modified":"2018-03-28T20:35:49","modified_gmt":"2018-03-28T12:35:49","slug":"fundraising-big-focus-for-leosat-in-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/fundraising-big-focus-for-leosat-in-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Fundraising Big Focus for LeoSat in 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

NewSpace startup LeoSat<\/strong>, which is building the satellite equivalent of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) in space, plans to focus primarily on raising funds for its Series A round this year. With a glut of major customer agreements already signed, the company\u2019s next hurdle is ensuring it has enough cash on hand to build out its full constellation by 2022, said LeoSat Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Rigolle in an interview with Via Satellite.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t sell to customers unless you\u2019re building something, and you can\u2019t build something without money. But you can\u2019t get money without customers. So it\u2019s like a dog chasing its tail,\u201d Rigolle joked. \u201cYou need to advance on the sales front, technical front and funding front at the same time. It\u2019s a three-legged stool.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Rigolle, discussions with customers have progressed swimmingly \u2014 thus far, the company has secured more than $700 million in future commitments, and plans to announce \u201cprobably five or six\u201d more agreements in the coming weeks and months.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Mark Rigolle, LeoSat CEO. Photo: LeoSat.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Because LeoSat\u2019s offering is not broadband capacity per se, the company is positioning its services adjacent to fiber, but at a premium. Its most promising customers are large international corporations that run highly sensitive information across long distances. Rigolle highlighted pharmaceutical companies as one example: \u201cThey have multiple research centers where people do distance collaboration. Now, they do that over a patchwork of terrestrial systems that run through internet exchanges, where someone could physically intercept that signal,\u201d he said. \u201cFor them, intellectual property is everything. If you steal a molecule, that can kill a pharmaceutical company.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crux of LeoSat\u2019s security advantage is its intersatellite laser links, which allow the company to transfer data globally while bypassing vulnerable terrestrial gateways. On the technical front, LeoSat has worked with engineers from Sky Perfect JSAT<\/strong>, which invested in the company last year, to finalize the constellation\u2019s design. According to Rigolle, the two companies have together derisked the technology around the \u201csatellite links and the onboard processors,\u201d which allowed LeoSat to debut its Series A with the goal of raising $100 million.<\/p>\n

LeoSat also recently signed an agreement with Phasor<\/strong> to develop a Ka-band version of its low-profile Electronically Steered Antenna (ESA). While a traditional mechanized dish will be sufficient for the majority of the company\u2019s services, ESAs could unlock new applications and customer bases, Rigolle said, pointing to embassy networks as an example. \u201cThe U.S. embassy in London or Paris is never going to get planning permission \u2014 or they don\u2019t have the room \u2014 to put a mechanized dish solution for high throughput. Being able to have a flat panel on the roof makes a lot of things possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

So with the core technology and initial customers in place, what LeoSat needs to do now is prepare for the manufacturing phase. \u201cFor that, we need the third leg of the stool, which is the money,\u201d Rigolle said. LeoSat intends to close its Series A by the second quarter of this year, after which it will immediately kick off its Series B round to raise an additional $175 million. The total cost to build the full constellation will be around $3.6 billion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question is, who is going to be amongst the large industrial strategic shareholders,\u201d Rigolle said. Of the total raised funds, the percentage invested by \u201cstrategics\u201d will be quite high for LeoSat\u2019s Series A, somewhere around 80 percent. That percentage will decline over time, \u201cto the point that in our Series C or D I see infrastructure funds coming in,\u201d Rigolle said.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, these infrastructure investors would have never touched something that\u2019s pre-revenue, Rigolle said. Now, though, they are beginning to lax their criteria as they try to find more productive investments. \u201cThese are people who invest in airports, ports, tunnels and bridges. They\u2019re looking at satellites as well,\u201d Rigolle said.<\/p>\n

Rigolle added that while the company has not yet chosen a launch provider, the determining factor will be the ability to do multiple burns per stage. \u201cWe\u2019ll be trying to have diversity of launch vehicles\u201d to mitigate the risk, Rigolle said, which means SpaceX\u2019s<\/strong> Falcon 9, Russia\u2019s Soyuz, International Launch Services\u2019<\/strong> Proton, and Arianespace\u2019s <\/strong>upcoming Ariane 6 are all potential candidates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NewSpace startup LeoSat, which is building the satellite equivalent of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) in space, plans to focus primarily on raising funds for its Series A round this year. With a glut of major customer agreements already signed, the company\u2019s next hurdle is ensuring it has enough cash on hand to build out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65608"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}