Startups

Seraphim Capital’s space tech accelerator releases details of its newest Space Camp cohort

Comment

Image Credits: Aleksandar Georgiev (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

The U.K.’s Seraphim Capital, which operates the country’s only space tech accelerator, has released details of its newest cohort as part of its Space Camp programme, timed with the end of World Space Week last week.

4pi Lab
Raised so far: Undisclosed amount / Non-Equity Assistance from Creative Destruction Lab
Description: “4pi Lab is developing a Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation providing real-time, wildfire detection, monitoring and reporting. Their unique sensor gives them the ability to detect wildfires at a 10m resolution globally helping to eradicate major catastrophic wildfire events.”

Clutch Space Systems
Raised so far: £300,000 from FSE Group Enterprise M3 Expansion Loan
Description: “Clutch Space Systems provides software-defined radio (SDR) ground stations for satellite communications. SDR ground station technology improves downlink communications, provides significant cost savings and is far more dynamic, acting as an enabler for the exponentially growing Satcoms market.”

Xona Space Systems raises $1 million to improve satellite-based navigation services

Helix Technologies
Raised so far: N/A
Description: “Helix Technologies – enables precision GPS antennas, providing 10cm level accuracy. Through breakthroughs in manufacturing and RF technology, Helix has developed a new GNSS antenna with a ceramic core capable of precision dynamic position accuracy whilst being space efficient for demanding tel and navigation applications. The design also enables the antenna to be highly immune to reflection off infrastructure and jamming.”

Kinnami
Raised so far: Undisclosed amount / seed from ICE71 Accelerate, 25 June 2020
Description: “Kinnami uniquely secures and optimises data sharing, ongoing data migration and management across distributed systems. Kinnami has created a unique storage and security system, ‘AmiShare’, which fragments and encrypts data. By storing these encrypted fragments across a distributed network of devices, it can secure data collected on the edge and have application within Satcoms, Defence and Enterprise.”

Starfish Space
Raised so far: Undisclosed amount / seed, 1 December 2019
Description: “Starfish Space aims to create an on-demand, in-space transportation and maintenance service for orbiting satellites. Their proximity Operations software uses a combination of breakthrough orbital mechanics, Machine Vision AI, and a low-thrust electric propulsion system to enable them to use smaller and cheaper space tugs that can operate across orbits. This addresses Counter-space and Mission opportunities.”

Seraphim Space Camp launches its latest mission, with 7 spacetech startups

Sust Global
Raised so far: N/A
Description: “Sust Global provides real-time geospatial monitoring at an asset-level for analyzing Climate Risk. Their platform uses data from multiple satellites and ground sources to create full-stack ‘Asset-Level Geospatial Analytics’. Sust combines this data with the latest Climate Models and Standardised Risk Assessments to analyze risk and gain quantitative actionable insights for the Financial Services sector.”

Vector Photonics
Raised so far: 2018 secured undisclosed funding from ICURe; 2019 £70,000 of funding from Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and £30,000 from a Glasgow company to support that award
Description: “Vector Photonics’ disruptive and revolutionary photonic crystal lasers push the boundaries of what is possible with conventional semiconductor lasers providing comparable costs and flexibility with edge-emitting laser performance. Its unique beam steering capability is industry-changing in Datacoms and aligned markets like LIDAR.”

More TechCrunch

After Apple loosened its App Store guidelines to permit game emulators, the retro game emulator Delta — an app 10 years in the making — hit the top of the…

Adobe comes after indie game emulator Delta for copying its logo

Meta is once again taking on its competitors by developing a feature that borrows concepts from others — in this case, BeReal and Snapchat. The company is developing a feature…

Meta’s latest experiment borrows from BeReal’s and Snapchat’s core ideas

Welcome to Startups Weekly! We’ve been drowning in AI news this week, with Google’s I/O setting the pace. And Elon Musk rages against the machine.

Startups Weekly: It’s the dawning of the age of AI — plus,  Musk is raging against the machine

IndieBio’s Bay Area incubator is about to debut its 15th cohort of biotech startups. We took special note of a few, which were making some major, bordering on ludicrous, claims…

IndieBio’s SF incubator lineup is making some wild biotech promises

YouTube TV has announced that its multiview feature for watching four streams at once is now available on Android phones and tablets. The Android launch comes two months after YouTube…

YouTube TV’s ‘multiview’ feature is now available on Android phones and tablets

Featured Article

Two Santa Cruz students uncover security bug that could let millions do their laundry for free

CSC ServiceWorks provides laundry machines to thousands of residential homes and universities, but the company ignored requests to fix a security bug.

7 hours ago
Two Santa Cruz students uncover security bug that could let millions do their laundry for free

OpenAI’s Superalignment team, responsible for developing ways to govern and steer “superintelligent” AI systems, was promised 20% of the company’s compute resources, according to a person from that team. But…

OpenAI created a team to control ‘superintelligent’ AI — then let it wither, source says

TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 is just around the corner, and the buzz is palpable. But what if we told you there’s a chance for you to not just attend, but also…

Harness the TechCrunch Effect: Host a Side Event at Disrupt 2024

Decks are all about telling a compelling story and Goodcarbon does a good job on that front. But there’s important information missing too.

Pitch Deck Teardown: Goodcarbon’s $5.5M seed deck

Slack is making it difficult for its customers if they want the company to stop using its data for model training.

Slack under attack over sneaky AI training policy

A Texas-based company that provides health insurance and benefit plans disclosed a data breach affecting almost 2.5 million people, some of whom had their Social Security number stolen. WebTPA said…

Healthcare company WebTPA discloses breach affecting 2.5 million people

Featured Article

Microsoft dodges UK antitrust scrutiny over its Mistral AI stake

Microsoft won’t be facing antitrust scrutiny in the U.K. over its recent investment into French AI startup Mistral AI.

9 hours ago
Microsoft dodges UK antitrust scrutiny over its Mistral AI stake

Ember has partnered with HSBC in the U.K. so that the bank’s business customers can access Ember’s services from their online accounts.

Embedded finance is still trendy as accounting automation startup Ember partners with HSBC UK

Kudos uses AI to figure out consumer spending habits so it can then provide more personalized financial advice, like maximizing rewards and utilizing credit effectively.

Kudos lands $10M for an AI smart wallet that picks the best credit card for purchases

The EU’s warning comes after Microsoft failed to respond to a legally binding request for information that focused on its generative AI tools.

EU warns Microsoft it could be fined billions over missing GenAI risk info

The prospects for troubled banking-as-a-service startup Synapse have gone from bad to worse this week after a United States Trustee filed an emergency motion on Wednesday.  The trustee is asking…

A US Trustee wants troubled fintech Synapse to be liquidated via Chapter 7 bankruptcy, cites ‘gross mismanagement’

U.K.-based Seraphim Space is spinning up its 13th accelerator program, with nine participating companies working on a range of tech from propulsion to in-space manufacturing and space situational awareness. The…

Seraphim’s latest space accelerator welcomes nine companies

OpenAI has reached a deal with Reddit to use the social news site’s data for training AI models. In a blog post on OpenAI’s press relations site, the company said…

OpenAI inks deal to train AI on Reddit data

X users will now be able to discover posts from new Communities that are trending directly from an Explore tab within the section.

X pushes more users to Communities

For Mark Zuckerberg’s 40th birthday, his wife got him a photoshoot. Zuckerberg gives the camera a sly smile as he sits amid a carefully crafted re-creation of his childhood bedroom.…

Mark Zuckerberg’s makeover: Midlife crisis or carefully crafted rebrand?

Strava announced a slew of features, including AI to weed out leaderboard cheats, a new ‘family’ subscription plan, dark mode and more.

Strava taps AI to weed out leaderboard cheats, unveils ‘family’ plan, dark mode and more

We all fall down sometimes. Astronauts are no exception. You need to be in peak physical condition for space travel, but bulky space suits and lower gravity levels can be…

Astronauts fall over. Robotic limbs can help them back up.

Microsoft will launch its custom Cobalt 100 chips to customers as a public preview at its Build conference next week, TechCrunch has learned. In an analyst briefing ahead of Build,…

Microsoft’s custom Cobalt chips will come to Azure next week

What a wild week for transportation news! It was a smorgasbord of news that seemed to touch every sector and theme in transportation.

Tesla keeps cutting jobs and the feds probe Waymo

Sony Music Group has sent letters to more than 700 tech companies and music streaming services to warn them not to use its music to train AI without explicit permission.…

Sony Music warns tech companies over ‘unauthorized’ use of its content to train AI

Winston Chi, Butter’s founder and CEO, told TechCrunch that “most parties, including our investors and us, are making money” from the exit.

GrubMarket buys Butter to give its food distribution tech an AI boost

The investor lawsuit is related to Bolt securing a $30 million personal loan to Ryan Breslow, which was later defaulted on.

Bolt founder Ryan Breslow wants to settle an investor lawsuit by returning $37 million worth of shares

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, launched an enterprise version of the prominent social network in 2015. It always seemed like a stretch for a company built on a consumer…

With the end of Workplace, it’s fair to wonder if Meta was ever serious about the enterprise

X, formerly Twitter, turned TweetDeck into X Pro and pushed it behind a paywall. But there is a new column-based social media tool in town, and it’s from Instagram Threads.…

Meta Threads is testing pinned columns on the web, similar to the old TweetDeck

As part of 2024’s Accessibility Awareness Day, Google is showing off some updates to Android that should be useful to folks with mobility or vision impairments. Project Gameface allows gamers…

Google expands hands-free and eyes-free interfaces on Android