Marble Imaging, founded to fill a critical capability gap in Europe's intelligence infrastructure, has raised an additional €6 million led by Cherry Ventures. This extends the initial €5.3 million seed round led by High-Tech Gründerfonds.
Marble Imaging is a big-data EO company founded in August 2023 in Bremen, Germany, building its constellation of very-high-resolution (VHR) satellites to provide up to hourly EO data and analytics for time-critical insights of our planet.
Marble is setting up Germany's first commercial constellation of (VHR) satellites. VHR imagery is a core input for security and commercial intelligence, yet Europe and many of its partners depend on non-European providers. This makes them vulnerable to being cut off from coverage over key areas of interest, as seen in Ukraine or the Strait of Hormuz, creating major economic and security knowledge gaps.
The data and derived EO-based analytics will be vital in supporting rapid decision-making with regard to defence, climate security, crises and disaster management, green and sustainable energy transitions, infrastructure and mobility and much more.
Marble already offers advanced data analysis services, including object detection for situational intelligence, terrain analysis and trafficability assessment, coastal asset monitoring and land cover classification.
Alongside the space infrastructure backbone, Marble is building an AI-powered analytics platform where multi-source data is converted into insights.
As Marble's constellation scales, the interplay of these segments will create a uniquely well-trained AI solution delivering actionable decision-support for users in the defence, civil security, and critical infrastructure sectors as well as beyond.
"To make better decisions, data access must be immediate and actionable," says Robert Hook, co-founder and CEO of Marble Imaging.
"Europe and many of its global partners lack this capability today. We at Marble are determined to close this gap, and Cherry's trust helps us achieve this faster."
Marble's first satellite, Marble Sat-1, is fully funded, completed pre-flight testing and scheduled to launch in early 2027. It is designed to capture imagery at up to 0.7 m spatial resolution in the visible and near-infrared spectrum and will also gather data in the short wave infrared spectrum.
The new funding accelerates the scaling of our constellation, with a goal of 30 satellites by 2030.
"Europe needs its own eyes in space, and Marble Imaging is building them. They are using AI to turn pixels into answers, exactly what government and defence customers need. This team has spent their careers in the industry and knows what it takes to build something very big. The product Marble will deliver doesn't exist in Europe yet, but we're convinced it has to," says Filip Dames, Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures.
Lead image: The founding team of Marble Imaging: Dr Raul Scarlat (Lead instrument scientist), Robert Hook (CEO), Dr Gopika Suresh (CSO), Alexander Epp (CCO). Credit: Marble Imaging
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