Allied Minds reports its portfolio company BridgeSat, Inc. has completed a $6 million Series A funding round, including participation from Space Angels, an early stage investment group comprising experts in the Space 2.0 field. The fundraise was completed at a pre-money valuation of $15 million, up from the previous valuation of $7 million.

BridgeSat is reinventing satellite communication with an advanced optical communications network that delivers fast, reliable and affordable data transmission to enable a new era of applications and services.

BridgeSat's network will enable low earth orbit (LEO) satellite operators to transmit data at speeds of up to 10 Gbps, a significant improvement over current radio frequency (RF) data downlink technologies. BridgeSat estimates that the addressable optical downlink market is $1.5 billion annually, a sub-set of the $9.6 billion satellite network market, with LEO data downlink forecasted to grow at 125% annually.

Proceeds from the fundraise will be used to accelerate the three core elements of BridgeSat's solution: space terminal (the equipment fixed to customer satellites), ground stations (receiving the data from space) and network (transmitting the data to end customers via cloud based software).

BridgeSat was formed in 2015 applying technology sourced from Allied Minds partners: The Aerospace Corporation and Draper. The first BridgeSat ground station is scheduled to be demonstrated in late 2017 and BridgeSat has signed a commercial agreement securing additional ground sites for its network.

BridgeSat has commercial agreements in place with satellite operators to utilize the BridgeSat network and include BridgeSat space terminals on their satellites.

Jill Smith, CEO of Allied Minds, commented "We are excited by the rapid progress BridgeSat has made in advancing the key elements of its optical downlink network; a technology that has the potential to unlock significant benefits for the large and fast growing LEO data downlink market.

"The participation of Space Angels in this funding round is an important validation for the business, and is consistent with our objective to broaden Allied Minds' funding syndicate and secure investment from strategic and independent financial investors at an earlier stage in our subsidiaries' development.

"The BridgeSat fundraise follows the successful Series A round for HawkEye 360 completed at the end of 2016, and underlines Allied Minds' growing expertise in the satellite and data management verticals."

Matt Thoms, General Manager of BridgeSat commented "We are thrilled to have completed BridgeSat's Series A funding round. Proceeds will fuel the next stage of the company's development as we look to demonstrate our first end to end optical downlink later this year and accelerate our network build out into 2018."

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