Global Brain (GB) and Mitsui Fudosan announced the investment in Axelspace Corporation, a company that develops space-based business technology using microsatellites, as lead investors of the JPY 30 billion venture investment project (the “Growth-stage Project”), which mainly targets growth-stage startups. This investment is the first case of the Growth-stage Project.
Since its founding in 2008, Axelspace has developed microsatellites, and it has a proven track record of developing, launching and operating three commercial satellites, including the Arctic Ocean observation satellite, developed for Weathernews Inc.
In 2015, Axelspace raised JPY 1.9 billion in venture capital funding and announced the construction concept of “AxelGlobe,” a global Earth observation infrastructure. A constellation of dozens of satellites, AxelGlobe will be able to capture images of virtually all of the areas where humans are economically active, accumulating and analyzing image data from the past until the present to produce insights and forecasts of natural and manufactured phenomena. Employing several dozen GRUS (remote-sensing microsatellites that weigh around 100kg each), AxelGlobe is expected to be completed by 2022.
About Axelspace
- Location
- Tokyo, Japan
- Representative
- Yuya Nakamura
- Founded
- August, 2008
About Growth-stage Project
- Project name
- 31VENTURES – Global Brain – Growth I Project
- Operators
- Mitsui Fudosan Co., Ltd. and Global Brain Corporation
- Investment size
- JPY 30 billion
- Operation term
- 10 years
About GB
- Location
- Tokyo, Japan
- Representative
- Yasuhiko Yurimoto
- Founded
- January, 1998