SAR-satellite startup Capella Space creates ‘federal’ unit for US government sales

WASHINGTON — San Francisco-based startup Capella Space today announced the creation of a subsidiary to target US government sales of its synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imagery products, called Capella Federal and headed by Eric Traupe, a retired Marine and former senior CIA official.

“The reason we’re doing it is to to provide additional comfort and security around some of the integration requests that we’re getting between our system and the government system. And we want to sort of encapsulate that and package it very nicely through Capella Federal. It just makes things cleaner and easier,” Capella CEO Payam Banazadeh told Breaking Defense.

Capella Federal will tailor “the delivery of SAR imagery specifically to meet the heightened security and facility clearance needs of its U.S. government, defense, and intelligence customers at a larger scale,” the company elaborated in its announcement.

Capella has landed numerous contracts in the defense and intelligence sector, including the National Reconnaissance Office, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Air Force, Navy, and Space Force. Most of the company’s revenue comes from government sales, both US and allied, Banazadeh said, with a “fairly balanced” percentage between the two.

“Right now, we see a clear need on the government side. We have a clear solution for the problems that that they have. And so we’re very much focused on that,” Banazadeh said.

Interest in SAR imagery, which can provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data at night and in bad weather, from national security agencies has only trended up in the wake of the Ukraine war — where commercially provided SAR imagery (as well as other types of satellite imagery) has proven to be a boon to the embattled government in Kiev.

“There is significant value in unclassified, shareable SAR imagery. And we’ve seen that in Ukraine. And so I think that has changed people’s minds quite a bit which has given a lot of momentum to … how government thinks about future procurements,” Banazadeh noted.

He said that while the company hasn’t been particularly focused on commercial sales, Capella expects that end of the business to step up as well.

“We believe over time that [the] percentage on the commercial side is going to grow because the demand is going to grow,” he said.

The decision to create Capella Federal also comes on the heels of Capella closing “a $60 million growth equity financing round from the U.S. Innovative Technology Fund to expand satellite imaging capacity and meet rapidly growing customer demand,” the press release noted.

The U.S. Innovative Technology Fund is not a government entity, but rather a private venture capital firm launched by Thomas Tull, the tech investor who, among other things, founded the movie studio Legendary Entertainment that made “The Dark Knight” and “Dune” among other blockbusters. According to Pitchbook, the fund invests in “information technology, quantum computing, artificial intelligence [and] machine learning, cybersecurity, biotechnology, space technology and business products and services (B2B) sectors in the United States.”

Taupe, and many of his team — including Vice President and General Manager Amy Hopkins, who has been overseeing Capella’s government work since joining the company in late 2021 — will be based in the Washington, DC metro area.

Capella Space has also created a separate board for the new subsidiary, to be chaired by Clayton Hutmacher, former director of operations at US Special Operation Command. Hutmacher also will sit on the parent company’s Government Advisory Board, which has been expanded to include “several new members who bring decades of military and intelligence experience,” the press Capella release said.