Xoople Raises $130M for Earth-Understanding AI Data Infrastructure
▼ Summary
– Xoople, a Madrid-based geospatial data company founded in 2019, raised a $130 million Series B led by Nazca Capital, bringing its total funding to $225 million and achieving a unicorn valuation.
– The company announced a partnership with US contractor L3Harris Technologies to build sensors for its own satellite constellation, aiming for data quality vastly superior to current systems.
– Its core product, EarthAI, is a platform that processes continuous Earth surface data into AI-ready datasets for industries like agriculture, insurance, and government.
– Xoople’s strategy focused first on distribution, embedding its platform within Microsoft Azure and Esri’s ecosystems before developing its own satellite data source.
– This funding round highlights significant European deep-tech investment, with backing from government and private equity funds focused on aerospace and defence.
A Madrid-based startup has secured a major investment to build a new kind of data infrastructure for the planet. Xoople announced a $130 million Series B funding round, led by Nazca Capital and supported by MCH Private Equity, CDTI, Buenavista Equity Partners, and Endeavor Catalyst. This investment brings the company’s total funding to $225 million and pushes its valuation into unicorn territory. In a parallel strategic move, Xoople revealed a partnership with the US space and defence contractor L3Harris Technologies to develop sensors for its own proprietary satellite constellation. The company claims this system will generate Earth surface data that is two orders of magnitude better than current monitoring solutions.
Founded in 2019, Xoople has spent seven years developing what it calls an AI-native data layer for the Earth’s surface. The company’s thesis is that the age of artificial intelligence demands a fundamentally different approach to geospatial information. Instead of adapting traditional satellite imagery workflows built for human analysis, Xoople engineered its platform from the ground up to feed machine learning models. Its core product, the EarthAI platform, is built on Microsoft Azure and distributed through Microsoft and Esri, embedding it directly into the world’s most widely used enterprise geospatial ecosystems.
The EarthAI system functions as an end-to-end intelligence engine. It ingests continuous surface data from existing government and third-party satellites, processing it into structured, AI-ready datasets. This continuous stream enables applications like change detection, risk prediction, and environmental monitoring across several critical industries. For the agriculture sector, it can detect crop stress early and generate data for carbon credit markets. Insurance companies use it for precise climate risk modeling and to verify claims after natural disasters. Infrastructure operators monitor asset health, and governments apply it to tasks from environmental enforcement to emergency response.
A significant portion of the new capital will fund Xoople’s ambitious move from data processor to data originator. The partnership with L3Harris is central to this shift, aiming to create a proprietary satellite constellation for collecting optical data. CEO Fabrizio Pirondini states the goal is to produce a data stream with radically improved quality. This step places Xoople in direct competition with established players like Planet Labs, Airbus Defence and Space, and Vantor, all of which already operate their own satellites. The company must now bridge the gap between its technological promise and the operational reality of launching its hardware.
Xoople’s strategy has notably inverted the typical playbook in Earth observation. While most competitors launch satellites first and then seek customers, Xoople focused initially on distribution and integration. By embedding its EarthAI platform within Microsoft’s and Esri’s dominant software environments, it secured a channel to enterprise and government buyers before owning its data source. This integration means that once its high-quality proprietary data is available, it will already have a commercial pathway that would take rivals years to build.
This funding round stands as one of Spain’s largest recent deep tech investments and arrives during a period of accelerated activity in European space and defence financing. The investor mix, combining government-backed funds like CDTI with private equity and Endeavor Catalyst, highlights a European model of funding that blends technical ambition with patient capital and a public interest dimension. The broader Earth observation market, valued at over $7 billion in 2025, is projected for steady growth. Xoople is betting that the demand for continuous surface intelligence tailored for AI will expand even faster, especially in climate, infrastructure, and risk applications. This $130 million vote of confidence is a wager that the company’s integrated platform and future data supply will capture that accelerating market in the years ahead.
(Source: The Next Web)