Allied Minds raises $2.75m in equity to finance satellite development

Allied Minds, a life science venture capital firm, reported that its subsidiary HawkEye, which develops radio frequency mapping systems, has completed the second closing of series A financing and has issued an additional $2.75m of equity.

HawkEye has issued a further $2.75m in new equity in a second closing of series A preferred financing, including the issue of up to $1.5m of warrants related to a $3m development of three small satellites called the HawkEye 360 Pathfinder Cluster, which is set to launch and for testing in late 2017.

The second closing, which gained Woodford Investment Management and Invesco Perpetual as new investors, takes the total amount of new equity issued by Hawkeye under the series A preferred financing to $13.75m.

Allied Minds said that the development programme and the recruitment of Woodford and Invesco as investors are important steps for Hawkeye as it aims to build the world's first privately funded constellation of small satellites capable of collecting data and generating analytics on geolocated wireless signals. This could be used across commercial and government sectors, such as monitoring transport networks for safe activity and improving rescue response times.

It also said that the study of radio frequency could help identify areas of interference, better understand spectrum deployment, and avoid negative impact to operations.

HawkEye chief executive John Serafini said: "HawkEye 360 is excited to welcome Invesco and Woodford as shareholders. As we move forward with preparations to launch our Pathfinder cluster, we are excited to have a diverse group of investors to support our efforts to scale this great company.”

Shares in Allied Minds were up 0.08% to 380.20p at 0800 GMT.