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Satellite data company Spire Global Inc said on Monday it has agreed to go public through a merger with blank-check acquisition firm NavSight Holdings Inc at a $1.6 billion valuation.<\/p>\n
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It is the latest example of a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merging with a company in the space industry, following deals for the likes of space tourism company Virgin Galactic and rocket startup Astra.<\/p>\n
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Spire said it expects the deal will provide it with up to $475 million in proceeds. NavSight is providing $230 million of this, with the rest coming from a private investment in public equity (PIPE) transaction.<\/p>\n
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Investors in the PIPE include Tiger Global Management, BlackRock Inc and the family office of billionaire Barry Sternlicht.<\/p>\n
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Spire, which was founded nearly a decade ago, helps customers address challenges including climate change. It uses a collection of nanosatellites to garner data and then sells it on to the customers.<\/p>\n
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The data collected has applications in areas such as weather forecasting, orbital services, and aircraft and ship monitoring. Its customers include NASA, the U.S. air force and Chevron Corp.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis transaction funds these growth plans and allows us to pursue, on a more aggressive timetable, this massive and growing long-term opportunity ahead of us,\u201d Peter Platzer, Spire\u2019s founder and chief executive, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
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San Francisco-based Spire expects to generate $70 million in revenue this year, and forecasts that will rise to almost $1.2 billion by 2025.<\/p>\n
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\u201cSpire is leading the way with its modern SaaS-based (software as a service) approach to meet the significant, growing demand for space-based data,\u201d said NavSight Chairman and CEO Bob Coleman.<\/p>\n
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NavSight raised $230 million in an initial public offering in New York in September.<\/p>\n
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(Reporting by Joshua Franklin; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)<\/em><\/p>\n maritime professional<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Satellite data company Spire Global Inc said on Monday it has agreed to go public through a merger with blank-check acquisition firm NavSight Holdings Inc at a $1.6 billion valuation. It is the latest example of a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merging with a company in the space industry, following deals for the likes …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[2192,1583,1202,1711,1584,2422,14963,3400,4877],"class_list":["post-25923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-company","tag-data","tag-deal","tag-latest","tag-public","tag-satellite","tag-spac","tag-space","tag-spire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/25924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}