A Spanish startup wants to become the foundational data layer for the next generation of AI — not by scraping the web, but by photographing the planet from orbit.
Xoople, a Madrid-based Earth Intelligence company, announced Sunday that it has closed a $130 million Series B round led by Nazca Capital. The raise brings the company's total funding to $225 million and, according to CEO and cofounder Fabrizio Pirondini, pushes its valuation into "unicorn territory."
Building a Constellation for AI
Founded in 2019, Xoople has spent roughly seven years developing a technology stack around data collected by government spacecraft and integrating with major cloud providers. Now the company is ready to build its own satellite constellation — purpose-built to supply AI models with continuous, high-resolution Earth observation data.
The startup simultaneously announced a partnership with U.S. space and defense contractor L3Harris Technologies, which will manufacture the sensors for Xoople's spacecraft. L3Harris has built some of the most advanced commercial imaging systems currently in orbit.
Pirondini described the sensors as capable of collecting "a stream of data that is going to be two orders of magnitude better than existing monitoring systems," though he declined to share details about the number of satellites or their orbital configuration, saying only that the sensors will collect optical data.
From Raw Imagery to Machine-Ready Intelligence
Xoople's platform, called EarthAI, processes real-time data about changes on the Earth's surface and packages it in formats that can be fed directly into enterprise AI systems. Rather than selling satellite images for human analysts to interpret, the company is betting that the real value lies in creating a continuous, machine-readable data feed.
Use cases span multiple industries: government agencies tracking transportation networks and assessing damage from natural disasters, agribusinesses monitoring crop health at scale, and large enterprises keeping tabs on infrastructure projects or global supply chains.
A Growing Market for Earth Data
The raise comes as demand for high-quality training and inference data continues to surge across the AI industry. While much attention has focused on text and code datasets, geospatial data represents a massive and relatively untapped frontier — one where real-time accuracy matters far more than scale alone.
Xoople's approach also positions it at the intersection of two booming sectors: commercial space and enterprise AI. With L3Harris providing defense-grade sensor technology and Nazca Capital leading the growth round, the company appears well-resourced to compete against established players in satellite imagery like Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies.
The company has not disclosed a timeline for launching its first satellites, but Pirondini indicated that Xoople is moving from platform development into hardware execution — a critical and capital-intensive transition for any space startup.
