NY headquartered Antarctica Capital had earlier acquired assets of Canadian satellite company Urthecast which was facing insolvency to restructure it as EarthDaily Analytics
Private equity firm Antarctica Capital has acquired geospatial solutions provider Descartes Labs for an undisclosed sum. The move, announced on Thursday, August 4, complements Antarctica’s existing portfolio of companies spanning New Space, Data Analytics and Digital Infrastructure. It will see Antarctica operating partners Richard Davis taking over as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Graeme Shaw as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Descartes Labs.
Antarctica Capital, an international private equity firm headquartered in New York, is dedicated to investments in private markets and real assets and the establishment of long-term capital vehicles to leverage this investment focus.
Descartes Labs, spun off by a group of scientists led by Mark Johnson, from the US Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2014, performs scientific analysis of geospatial, remote sensing, and diverse complementary datasets. Its SaaS platform uses AI and machine learning to automate analysis of geospatial imagery to help its customers make commodity price forecasting in areas like agriculture, consumer goods, mining, energy, sustainability etc. Descartes Labs also works with a diverse set of federal government customers to process multi-source geospatial data.
“Antarctica Capital has been following Descartes Labs for some time and is extremely excited about the company’s mission, expertise and trajectory and wider industry momentum. We believe these factors and the growth potential of the business fits well within Antarctica’s investment criteria and further present some interesting synergy opportunities with our other portfolio companies,” Graeme Shaw, who took over COO, as told Geospatial World over email.
“Antarctica Capital believes in providing more than capital to our portfolio companies and stepping into key management roles is consistent with our goals to help the company achieve its full potential. There are no further restructuring plans at this time,” he added.
Shaw said Descartes Labs’ strength was in providing deep and valuable real-world insights across multiple market verticals, based on sophisticated and proprietary geospatial data-analytics tools. This mix of innovation and value proposition to its clients and opportunities for growth fits Antarctica’s investment strategy very well.
Additionally, Descartes Labs is also very complementary to EarthDaily, providing services to similar customers in similar verticals, but in different parts of the overall value-chain.
Earlier, Chandra Patel, Managing Director of Antarctica Capital, said, “Antarctica Capital has a strong institutional commitment to the geospatial and data analytics sectors and Descartes Labs will be very complementary to our other portfolio companies in these sectors.”
The acquisition of Descartes Labs is interesting given that Antarctica Capital had last year acquired some assets of the Canadian satellite company Urthecast which was facing insolvency to restructure it as EarthDaily Analytics.
Currently, EarthDaily Analytics positions itself as a vertically integrated data processing and analytics company which uses cutting-edge Big Data tools on satellite imagery for addressing issues in the field of sustainable agriculture, disaster management, climate change monitoring, among others. Its fully automated SaaS data processing platform, EarthPipeline, transforms raw satellite data into ultra-high quality image products, which are direct-to-algorithm ready and power AI-based analytics products and services.
In January this year, EarthDaily announced its plans to launch a constellation of nine earth observation satellites, with the first three slated for launch around July 2023.
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No merger/restructuring plans
Interestingly, Antarctica Capital doesn’t have any plans to merge or consolidate the Earth Observation side of business. “We believe that Descartes Labs and EarthDaily Analytics have their own core competencies and market strengths, and we see numerous opportunities ahead for them to collaborate as complimentary service providers to their customers,” Shaw told GW.
“The formation of EarthDaily Analytics was meant to continue the highly valuable work that had been performed and developed at legacy UrtheCast Corp. and propel opportunities for growth. We see the Descartes Labs acquisition in a similar manner and Antarctica is committed to providing the company with the necessary capital and expertise to help it grow,” he added.
Patel had also earlier said that Antarctica Capital was committed to maintaining Descartes’ current business, while also providing the necessary capital and expertise to ensure the company’s growth. “We are confident that Antarctica can build upon Descartes legacy of innovation and insights to enable the company to realize its immense potential.”
