Diffraqtion announced more than $5 million in additional funding on Monday, more than doubling its pre-seed and bringing the startup’s total funding to over $10 million. The fresh investments include Lockheed Martin Ventures and Sumitomo Corporation’s Presidio Ventures.
The company previously closed a $4.2 million pre-seed round in January that included participation from QDNL Participations, milemark•capital, Aether VC and ADIN, plus a $1.5 million DARPA SBIR Direct-to-Phase II contract. Other new investors in this tranche include SBI US Gateway Fund with Plug and Play, Collaborative Fund and TekVentures.
The Massachusetts-based startup is building space cameras that combine quantum imaging and AI to either detect distant objects or resolve nearer targets clearly with a much smaller lens. The firm says the approach aims to reduce both processing time and cost while delivering high-end capability at a fraction of the usual aperture, size and price.
“For as long as cameras have existed, seeing farther has meant building bigger optics,” CEO and cofounder Johannes Galatsanos said in a statement. “Our cameras break that paradigm, delivering better mission capability at a fraction of the aperture, size, and cost.”
Diffraqtion milestones and next steps
Since emerging from stealth with its pre-seed round earlier this year, Diffraqtion has demoed its technology at a terrestrial observatory, secured a SBIR Phase I award from NASA for tracking space debris, and won NASA’s Space to Soil Challenge — a competition that awarded the company $100,000 for designing a small-sat mission using advanced computing to study the Earth.
The latest funding is intended to help Diffraqtion obtain flight heritage in orbit: officials plan to launch a hosted payload on an unnamed spacecraft. To support that phase, Peter Kazlas will join the company as head of engineering.
