Building on funding from the Canadian Space Agency, Vancouver startup Metaspectral this week closed a seed round.
The BC-based startup, which is advancing computer vision through deep learning and hyperspectral imagery, secured $4.7 million from SOMA Capital, Acequia Capital, the Government of Canada, and multiple angel investors including Jude Gomila and Alan Rutledge.
The company stated that it plans to use the investment to scale up its team to support continued development and refinement of its Fusion platform, which is set to publicly launch this year. Fusion makes it easy for those with or without technical expertise to train and deploy deep learning models that analyze hyperspectral imagery in real-time.
Hyperspectral images contain information from the electromagnetic spectrum, making it possible to identify invisible properties of materials with computer vision.
“The platform can visually detect defects on a manufacturing line, classify plastic polymers, quantify greenhouse gas levels on the Earth’s surface, and has countless other applications,” said Francis Doumet, Metaspectral CEO and cofounder. “We have spent the last three years developing this technology and it is already being used in the aerospace, defense, agriculture, manufacturing, and other significant industries.”
The technology is also planned for deployment on the International Space Station to demonstrate real-time compression, streaming, and analysis of hyperspectral data from Low Earth Orbit. In 2021, the BC firm won a Canadian defence contract.
“Metaspectral is perfectly positioned to service the diverse needs of both enterprise and government clients to inform better, more immediate decision-making,” believes Aneel Ranadive, Managing Director and Founder of SOMA Capital.
According to Metaspectral’s chief technology officer, hyperspectral images include up to 300 unique spectral bands instead of the usual three that conventional colour cameras capture.
“This results in a tremendous volume of data that our technology is uniquely designed to handle,” explains Migel Tissera, also a cofounder. “We have developed novel data compression algorithms which allow us to shuttle hyperspectral data better and faster, whether from orbit-to-ground (in space) or within terrestrial networks (on Earth).”
Metaspectral is currently hiring deep-learning engineers and scientists, remote sensing scientists, and full-stack engineers.
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