Constellr is an EIC Scaling Club member in the New Space segment, headquartered in Germany, but with a globally distributed team. And it makes sense. After all, they’re building the future thermal atlas and digital twin of the world.

Using their own proprietary satellites and payload, Constellr gathers, interprets, and visualises ultra-precise thermal data of the world. That data has proven valuable to a variety of both civil and non-civil markets – agriculture, infrastructure, insurance, economic policy, water security, urban planning, to name just a few. 

Using thermal satellite imaging, Constellr is able to provide more context than an image or thermal reading alone. By combining the two, it is possible to infer more, and impact decision-making efforts. 

“For example, you’ve got an image where you might see a car one day and a car another day. But you can't actually infer anything from the image from one day to the next. With a temperature image, you see that continuous change and you’ve got an actual measurement, for example, of the temperature of the car, versus the colour of the car, on one day versus another day. So there’s a critical element in there.” - Cassi Welling, COO of Constellr

Constellr has raised over 27 million euro since its inception 5 years ago, and grown to a size of over 90 employees. With a team made up of over 25 nationalities and a physical presence in Germany, Belgium, France, and the USA, Contellr has been able to build out a team made up of highly talented individuals, who all bond over working on an important mission tackling global challenges. 

Constellr’s unique approach to global temperature tracking

Constellr combines proprietary hardware and software to generate unique data with ultra-high precision and accuracy. Their hardware consists of commercial satellites and payloads that they themselves have designed and developed, which allows them to collect unique data. Their software comes in the form of a digital twin. By collecting and visualizing the data, they are able to offer what in essence is a data insights platform. 

“This digital twin is at the heart of being able to scale as a business because it’s a software, it’s an insights platform. But it has this strong hardware element that brings in this capability, this precision and performance of data,” says Cassi.

Meanwhile the satellite data can be combined and integrated with other data sources in order to offer additional angles to the data. This approach lets Constellr provide a wide range of insight with only a handful of satellites, as opposed to thousands.

Constellr has already secured meaningful contracts with industry players in agriculture, geoanalytics, and more. In the public sector, they collaborate with the French and German space agencies, and also have a contract with the Copernicus mission.

Global challenges that bring space-scale opportunities, together with the EIC Scaling Club

Constellr recently announced their second commercial satellite launch, a resounding success that brings them one big step closer to offering real-time global thermal data.

Of course, not everything is smooth sailing. Cassi Welling pointed out turbulent waters along with potential opportunities: 

“The whole US geopolitical dynamics in relation to Europe brings some challenges to a small business like us. One of the topics we’re looking at is sovereignty. Around preparedness, being ready, having sovereign data that allows nation states to make decisions. That, for us, has been an interesting challenge and I think one that we’re in a very interesting position to address.”

Constellr shares that it’s never been more important to ensure that Europe has access to its own data, and that this turns a challenge into an opportunity for companies like Constellr. They are excited about being able to participate in the Copernicus mission, where their data will tie into findings in maritime services, disaster relief, coastal monitoring, environmental monitoring, and more. 

These global challenges also highlight the need for strengthening the European network, which is one thing that the EIC Scaling Club has provided a platform for. 

“The European network and the diversity it offers, the opportunity to reach new markets and new customers in the European space, is really critical for us. And now in the geopolitical climate it’s really important to us to say we’ve got strong European partners and that we’re part of the growing innovative ecosystem of young companies and startups in space.”

Constellr’s COO, Cassi, says that it’s equally important for them to give back to the community and feed into the culture of shared knowledge and compiled growth opportunities. 

Lessons for scaling – know where you’re going

Cassi highlights that the team has done a great job of driving growth, particularly as they navigate two successful satellite launches and embark on Series A fundraising. 

However, this would not be possible without knowing why they are scaling, and what they are scaling towards. This, Cassi says, is the key to successful high-speed growth for scaleups.

“Always be mindful of what scale means and why you’re doing it. Don't overbloat. Be always mindful of the next thing on the radar, think ahead, don't restrict yourself. It’s really important to be innovative, always thinking, ready to pivot, and therefore able to get the right people onboard quickly, have the right priorities set. One of the most important things that at least I learned is to be really clear about what your goals are. I know it sounds obvious, but you can’t scale unless you know where you’re scaling and why you’re scaling.”

Find out more about Constellr on their website, or follow them on Linkedin.

About the EIC Scaling Club

The EIC Scaling Club is a curated community where 120+ European deep tech scale-ups with the potential to build world-class businesses and solve major global challenges come together with investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders to spur growth.

The top 120+ European deep tech companies will be carefully selected from a pool of high-growth scale-ups that have benefitted from EIC financial schemes, other European and national innovation programmes, and beyond.

The EIC Scaling Club is an EIC-funded initiative run in partnership by Tech Tour, Bpifrance (EuroQuity), Hello Tomorrow, Tech.eu (Webrazzi), EurA and IESE Business School.

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