Key takeaways
- SpaceAM has closed its seed funding with support from Foresight and the UK government’s defence unicorn fund.
- Follows £2 million MOD award in May.
- The latest funding will help prepare the business for a Series A fundraising round.
UK aerospace and defence technology company SpaceAM has closed its seed funding round with backing from investment manager Foresight and the UK government’s Defence Unicorn Fund to expand its lightweight, AI-enabled sensor technology.
Financial details of the round have not been disclosed.
Founded in 2019, SpaceAM develops autonomous sensor systems that can be deployed into extreme environments to collect data where conventional systems are too heavy or costly.
The technology was originally developed for space exploration, but is now being applied across defence and security uses as well.
The company has recently secured contracts with both the UK Ministry of Defence and the European Space Agency, while growing its team and establishing new R&D facilities in Gloucestershire.
Foresight Investment director Rubina Singh said SpaceAM had developed a “differentiated sovereign autonomous sensing technology platform” addressing growing requirements across defence and security, with potential applications in other industries.
SpaceAM was also one of 13 companies selected in May for the UK government’s £20 million Defence Unicorn Fund, which aims to accelerate procurement from innovative British businesses and help develop the next generation of UK defence companies. The companies were awarded contracts worth up to £4 million through the MOD’s Commercial X, a unit designed to accelerate digital technology and innovations procurement for the military.
SpaceAM is believed to have received £2 million in UK government defence funding through the scheme.
SpaceAM founder and CEO Chris Isaac described the funding at the time a “game changer”, opening doors to venture capital investment conversations and helping to fund facility expansion.
Isaac said this latest seed round would provide capital to develop SpaceAM’s product range and help scale the business. “This is a clear signal to the market that we are preparing for a Series A round to scale at pace,” he added.
The government has positioned the Defence Unicorn Fund as part of a wider effort to increase investment in smaller UK defence companies and build domestic supply-chain resilience. It has committed to increase SME defence spending to £7.5 billion, from £5 billion, by May 2028.
Praful Nargund, director of the Good Growth Foundation, said SMEs could be “the heart of innovation in Britain” and that backing smaller companies was necessary to build the domestic supply-chain resilience on which “sovereign capability depends”.
