LiveEO, a Berlin-based infrastructure monitoring startup from space, has closed an investment round with btov Partners, Helen Ventures, Motu Ventures, Dieter von Holtzbrinck Ventures, Andreas Kupke and one of Silicon Valley's most renowned investors. The Series A investment of €5.25 million will enable LiveEO to further accelerate the development of its market-leading satellite-based infrastructure monitoring solution and international expansion.

LiveEO analyzes satellite imagery with artificial intelligence to monitor infrastructure networks such as railroads, power grids or pipelines, enabling operators of these assets to save operating costs and improve performance. Currently, LiveEO can count more than 30 network operators from around the world among its customers, including rail network operators such as Deutsche Bahn, power network operators such as E.ON subsidiaries e.dis, Bayernwerk (Germany), Tensio TS AS (Norway), E-Redes (formerly EDP, Portugal) and pipeline operators such as Gascade (Germany).

Following the funding round, LiveEO will focus on strengthening its business development efforts to build a global partner and customer network, strive for market leadership in the utility market, and begin expansion into the U.S. and adjacent markets.

LiveEO monitors and analyzes satellite data to identify outdoor threats, for example along rail networks, power grids, and oil and gas networks. Currently, the monitoring process for such outdoor assets is barely digitized and relies heavily on manual inspection processes, making it slow and expensive and increasing the risk for various damages from power outages to forest fires to leaks. LiveEO's solution increases safety and reduces operational costs by detecting hazards from vegetation, ground subsidence, and third-party interactions along the network. In total, LiveEO has analyzed infrastructure networks totaling more than 1 million km for some of the largest asset owners in the world.

"LiveEO is at the forefront of a whole new industry, monitoring large assets from space. We are excited about the opportunities through satellite data analysis to improve the safety and reliability of high-value assets and provide continuous monitoring for asset owners. We will gain valuable insights into how satellite-based monitoring can be used in the energy sector in the future," commented Dr. Terhi Vapola, Head of Helen Ventures.

LiveEO's platform combines satellite data from a variety of sources with other data sets and analyzes these data packages using AI. The resulting insights are then made available to customers' decision makers and operations personnel directly in asset management systems via LiveEO's web & mobile app orAPI integrations. Through this process, threat insights are created and delivered over 100 times faster compared to current methods.

The development of LiveEO is another example of the rapidly evolving commercialization of the space industry. Over the past decade, the miniaturization of satellites and cheaper access to space have sparked a hardware revolution that has led to an advanced satellite-based Earth observation data infrastructure. Now the industry is experiencing a second revolution, with software companies like LiveEO using these data streams to monitor every square meter on Earth.

"The team at btov Industrial Technologies has been exploring opportunities in New Space for some time. We were looking for an Earth Observation service provider that could solve a pressing problem for asset owners across a range of sectors with a true end-to-end service. We believe LiveEO will deliver tangible cost savings and service quality improvements to its growing customer base and look forward to exploring application areas beyond the utility sector, for example in mining, civil infrastructure and agriculture," commented Dr. Christian Reitberger of btov Partners.