Photo: HawkEye 360

HawkEye 360 Inc. said on July 13 that it has raised $58 million in a Series D-1 round of funding from venture capital and private equity firms, including BlackRock, Manhattan Venture Partners, Insight Partners, NightDragon, Strategic Development Fund, Razor’s Edge, Alumni Ventures, and Adage Capital.

HawkEye 360 has seven clusters of radio frequency (RF)-sensing satellites on orbit. Each cluster has three satellites. Last fall, Alex Fox, the company’s chief growth officer, said that HawkEye 360 plans to have 60 satellites on orbit in 20 clusters by 2025.

The newly raised $58 million “will be used to develop new space systems and expand analytics that support high-value defense missions,” HawkEye 360 said in a July 13 statement.

The company said that it plans to move to a new Block 3 satellite architecture starting with Cluster 14 and beyond.

“The company is also investing further in artificial intelligence, data fusion, and multi-intelligence orchestration to better extract value from the large amount of RF data being collected,” HawkEye 360 said. “The goal is to simplify analysis for its customers.”

Before Russia’s full-bore onslaught in Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2021, the U.S. government worked with commercial satellite companies to highlight Russia’s intentions to invade Ukraine and make it difficult for Russia to create any false pretexts to justify its invasion.

Less than two weeks after Russia’s attack, HawkEye 360 said that its analysts had found increased GPS interference in the region since November 2020.

HawkEye 360 has said that it has worked with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) since 2019 and that HawkEye 360 satellites will be compatible with DoD’s planned Joint All Domain Command and Control architecture.

Jared Carmel, the managing partner of Manhattan Venture Partners, said in the July 13 HawkEye 360 statement that the latter “has disrupted what used to be a static defense intelligence domain.”

“The company is the quintessential example of how a commercial operation could service the intelligence needs of the U.S. and our allies,” Carmel said.

So far this year, the NRO has awarded four, two-year contracts for RF remote sensing data to HawkEye 360, Maxar Technologies, Kleos Space and Spire Global under Stage II of the agency’s Strategic Commercial Enhancements Broad Agency Announcement Framework.

[This article was first published by Via Satellite sister publication Defense Daily.]