It’s a terrific treble as the London-based trio of Isotropic Systems, SenseOn and Vuealta have all received some tech funding.
Isotropic, a developer of broadband terminal technologies, raised over $37 million (£27.3 million); cybersecurity company SenseOn got $20 million (£14. 7 million); while planning & forecasting solutions provider Vuealta secured a “multi-million pound investment”.
Make Space for Isotropic
Isotropic picked up the funding in an additional Series B round to help with the development of its multi-link antenna through to product launch in 2022.
The round was led by “the world’s first listed space tech fund”, Seraphim Space Investment Trust. Other support came from existing investors including AEI HorizonX, Promus Ventures through its Luxembourg based space investment fund Orbital Ventures, SES and the UK Government. This latest funding takes the total capital secured for Isotropic to over $100 million (£73.8 million).
John Finney, Isotropic’s founder and CEO, comments: “The strong interest we have received from across the industry has given us the confidence to accelerate our growth plans and bring forward the commercialisation of our groundbreaking new terminals, harnessing the potential of the thousands of new satellites being launched across multiple orbits in the year ahead.”
The company will support new constellations and satellites launching in GEO (geo-stationary Earth orbit), MEO (medium Earth orbit), LEO (low Earth orbit) and HEO (highly elliptical orbit); and has expanded its workforce by 40% over the last five months.
It works in a range of markets, including government, defence, maritime, enterprise and aerospace.
With various new space constellations being launched by organisations including OneWeb (which got £217 million funding last month), Inmarsat, Intelsat, SpaceX, Amazon, SES and Telesat, “innovation in space needs to be matched by innovation on the ground, sea and in the air”.
On that note, also this week the UK has revealed its National Space Strategy in an attempt to grow its influence in the final frontier.
It’s On for SenseOn
SenseOn raised the funding in a Series A as it seeks to scale its cloud native AI cybersecurity platform. The fundraise follows a year in which the company grew by more than 350%. The round was led by Eight Roads Ventures and was supported by existing investors MMC Ventures, Crane Venture Partners and Winton Ventures.
CEO and founder of SenseOn, David Atkinson, explains: “We are facing a new reality whereby attackers are advancing more quickly than legacy approaches can keep up with, but hybrid and multi-cloud environments are far more complex than we yet know how to defend. Added to this, the volume and speed of data is beyond what legacy architecture was ever designed to handle. The daily headlines show legacy approaches don’t work and if we don’t do something courageous now as a security community, we aren’t going to stand a chance in the future.”
According to the firm, hacks and breaches are proliferating – with the total number of records compromised in 2020 exceeding 37 billion, a 141% increase compared to 2019.
SenseOn provides detection and response capabilities with AI-based automation and an open security data cloud. Its unified platform proactively detects and shuts down threats including ransomware, hacking / data theft and malicious insiders.
The fresh capital will be used for R&D and new staff. SenseOn has also welcomed Jeremy Duggan to its board. He has previously taken three SaaS companies – AppDynamics, Bladelogic and Ascential – to unicorn status.
A View of Vuealta
Vuealta played its cards close to its chest as the funding amount was not revealed.
The investment was backed by YFM Equity partners, which will enable Vuealta to support its plans for overseas expansion (wherever that may be).
David Wrench, YFM partner who led the investment, says Vuealta’s position as “a key partner to leading cloud-native planning platform Anaplan, which itself is seeing huge traction, gives it a fantastic opportunity to scale with the support of a multi-billion US-based disruptor”.
Vuealta was founded in 2017 and delivers scenario planning and forecasting solutions for supply chain, finance and operations. The business has grown to a team of 70 staff, with offices in four countries spanning the EMEA, North America and APAC regions.
Vuealta launched its Supply Chain Planning solutions suite in 2020. The SaaS solutions are built on the Anaplan platform, using its analytical and processing capability.
Over the past year, Vuealta has seen some growth, and now counts brands like direct-to-consumer beauty company Glossier, co-operative dairy company Fonterra and outdoor gear specialist Helly Hansen, on its books. The firm says this shows progress in every geography in which it operates.
As part of the investment, private technology investor Dominic Ely will invest alongside YFM and become non-executive chair.
