Australian satellite startup Esper secures $5m in funding
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The news: Australian satellite startup Esper has raised $5 million in seed funding to expand its satellite network for critical minerals detection.
The numbers: The Melbourne-based company, which also operates from Darwin, secured backing from Northern Australia venture capital investor Paspalis Capital and Islamic financial services company Hejaz.
The latest $5 million seed round follows a previous $US1 million ($1.57 million) pre-seed round in 2023 led by California-based Stellar Ventures, Dolby Family Ventures and San Francisco-based Day One Ventures. Esper has secured $31 million in US contracts across mining, defence and environmental monitoring sectors.
The context: Co-founders Shoaib Iqbal and Przemyslaw Lorenczak, who met at Monash University, have developed technology that uses hyperspectral imaging to detect critical mineral deposits such as lithium, cobalt and rare earths from space.
The company provides these images to clients in mining, agriculture, oil and gas, and national security. Esper plans to use the funding to expand its 12-person team and ramp up satellite launches, with its fourth satellite set to launch later this year. It aims to grow its constellation from three to eight satellites by 2026.
What they said: "With launches set for 2025-2026 and strong backing from Hejaz Financial Services and Paspalis Innovation Investment Fund, we're positioning Australia—particularly the mineral-rich Northern Territory—at the forefront of space-enabled resource discovery," wrote the company on Linkedin.
The sources: Esper Linkedin, AFR
