Near Space Labs
Table of Contents

⚠ Disclaimer: This entry may be incomplete, out of date, or inaccurate. It is AI-maintained on a best-effort basis. Do not rely on it as a sole source — verify claims independently using the sources listed below.

Summary

Near Space Labs is a Brooklyn, NY-based Earth-observation company that flies “Swift” — a 12-lb, zero-emission, helium-balloon-lifted autonomous imaging platform — at 60,000-85,000 ft to capture 7cm-resolution aerial imagery. Unlike the C-UAS-oriented balloon and airship platforms documented elsewhere on this site, Near Space Labs is built and sold specifically for civil Earth observation — primarily P&C insurance underwriting and claims, with secondary use in state/local government, utilities, forestry, and mapping — with no publicly disclosed defense or detection payload.

Key Facts

  • Founded: 2017 (per company’s own November 2024 press release), based in Brooklyn, NY
  • Type: Private company — stratospheric balloon imaging platform + data/analytics
  • Status: Active; nationwide US deployment reached November 2024; continuing expansion as of 2025-2026
  • Platform (“Swift”): 12-lb autonomous balloon-lifted imaging robot; operates at 60,000-85,000 ft; captures up to 1,000 sq km of imagery per flight (roughly equivalent to New York City’s five boroughs); 7cm image resolution
  • Funding: $20 million Series B (announced April 29, 2025), led by Bold Capital Partners (Peter Diamandis/XPRIZE-founded firm), with participation from USAA, Climate Capital, Gaingels, and River Park Ventures, alongside existing investors Crosslink Capital, Third Sphere, and Draper Associates. A company press release from November 2024 (pre-Series B) stated the company had raised $14.5 million to date; third-party aggregators (Tracxn) describe total funding as “more than $40 million” post-Series B — treat the aggregate figure as an estimate, since it isn’t confirmed in a company-published source fetched in this review
  • Notable investor/board addition: Tom Chi, a founding member of Google X and former head of Google’s Project Loon (Google’s own stratospheric-balloon internet program), joined as a strategic investor and board observer (announced October 2025)

What It Is / How It Works

The Swift is a compact, carbon-fiber-airframe payload carried to the stratosphere by a weather balloon rather than powered flight. Near Space Labs describes launch as requiring less than 20 minutes and not needing an airfield, a fixed schedule, or direct ground access to the target survey area — flights can be launched hundreds of miles from where imagery is actually needed. Multiple Swifts can be coordinated in a single mission via the company’s proprietary “StratoMap” flight-operations software to cover an area of hundreds of square miles. At mission end, the Swift descends by parachute to a designated recovery zone for reuse.

The company’s pitch is that stratospheric altitude (65,000 ft cited as the reference operating altitude) sits above weather, air traffic, and most restricted airspace, letting a single flight combine a satellite’s wide-area coverage with resolution closer to that of a drone or low-altitude fixed-wing aircraft — 7cm ground sample distance, which the company positions as matching or exceeding traditional manned aerial-survey quality. Every Swift carries an ADS-B transponder to broadcast position to air traffic control, and the company states every mission is coordinated directly with local ATC and the FAA.

The core commercial driver, per the company’s own November 2024 release, is the deteriorating US home-insurance underwriting environment: net combined ratios for US homeowners insurers exceeded 110% in 2023 amid severe-weather losses, pushing carriers to retreat from high-risk states (Florida, California, Texas) and creating demand for more frequent, more granular property-risk imagery than legacy aerial-survey cycles provide. Near Space Labs positions quarterly nationwide imagery refreshes as a direct response to that gap. Beyond insurance, the company lists infrastructure monitoring, environmental/forestry monitoring, geospatial services, and “hosted payloads” (third-party sensor integration, described as onboarded “in weeks rather than years”) among its named solution lines.

Notable Developments

  • 2025-10-07: Tom Chi (Google X founding member, former head of Google’s Project Loon stratospheric-balloon program) joins Near Space Labs as a strategic investor and board observer
  • 2025-09-22: Company appoints Jacob Grob as Vice President of Sales to lead expansion into insurance, reinsurance, and adjacent geospatial markets
  • 2025-04-29: Closes $20 million Series B led by Bold Capital Partners, with USAA, Climate Capital, Gaingels, and River Park Ventures joining existing investors Crosslink Capital, Third Sphere, and Draper Associates; funding earmarked to expand imagery coverage toward 80% of the US population, refreshed twice yearly
  • 2024-11-21: Announces nationwide US deployment of the Swift fleet with upgraded 7cm-resolution imagery — described by the company as the first nationwide network of stratospheric imaging robots; company states $14.5 million raised to date as of this release

Key People

  • Rema Matevosyan — CEO & Co-Founder. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/hripsime. Background per public bio: Junior Research Fellow at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (distributed space architectures / Earth observation research); MS Applied Mathematics, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT); BS Applied Mathematics, Yerevan State University. Co-founded the company in 2017.
  • Ignasi Lluch — CTO & Co-Founder. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ignasilc.
  • Albert Caubet — Chief Engineer & Co-Founder (named as a 2017 co-founder in company materials). LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/albert-caubet.
  • Asa Block — Chief Operating Officer. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ajiblock.
  • Tom Chi — Strategic investor and board observer (joined October 2025). Publicly known as a founding member of Google X and former head of Google’s Project Loon. ⚑ Overlap: Project Loon (Alphabet/Google X’s own stratospheric-balloon internet program, shut down in 2021) is the closest historical analog to the balloon-based HAPS companies tracked in this section — Chi’s move to Near Space Labs’ board is a direct personnel link between that earlier Alphabet program and the current commercial stratospheric-balloon field.

People — Last Reviewed: 2026-08-03

Claim Verification

Claim: $20 million Series B closed April 29, 2025, led by Bold Capital Partners

Status: Verified. Supporting sources: Near Space Labs Series B announcement — BusinessWire (Apr 29, 2025) confirms round size, lead investor, and participant list. Summary: Confirmed via the company’s own wire-service press release.

Claim: Total funding raised “more than $40 million” (post-Series B)

Status: Unverified. Supporting sources: Referenced in Tracxn’s third-party company-profile aggregation, surfaced via web search; not fetched from a Near Space Labs primary source in this session. Refuting/questioning sources: Near Space Labs’ own November 2024 press release states $14.5 million raised to date, which combined with the confirmed $20M Series B implies roughly $34.5M — short of the "$40M+" aggregator figure — unless additional undisclosed funding occurred between November 2024 and April 2025. Summary: Treat the “$40M+" total as a third-party estimate only; the two company-sourced figures ($14.5M pre-Series-B + $20M Series B) support a more conservative ~$34.5M+ total.

Claim: Swift captures up to 1,000 sq km of imagery per flight at 7cm resolution, operating 60,000-85,000 ft

Status: Verified (company-stated technical specification). Supporting sources: Near Space Labs — Our Tech and the November 2024 nationwide-deployment release both state these figures consistently. Refuting/questioning sources: None found; no independent third-party flight-performance verification (e.g., an aviation-tracking site log, as exists for some airship/balloon competitors) was located in this review. Summary: Consistently stated across the company’s own materials; independent corroboration was not found and would strengthen confidence.

Sources