Marble Imaging raises €6M to develop Europe's first commercial satellite constellation

Marble Imaging, a company focused on big-data Earth observation (EO), has raised an additional €6 million led by Cherry Ventures. This funding extends the initial €5.3 million seed round led by High-Tech Gründerfonds. Founded in August 2023 in Bremen, Germany, Marble Imaging is building a constellation of very-high-resolution (VHR) satellites to provide up to hourly EO data and analytics for time-critical insights about our planet.

Marble is establishing Germany's first commercial constellation of VHR satellites. VHR imagery is essential for security and commercial intelligence, yet Europe and many of its partners currently rely on non-European providers. This dependency poses risks of being cut off from coverage over critical areas, as evidenced in Ukraine and the Strait of Hormuz, leading to significant economic and security knowledge gaps.

The data and derived EO-based analytics will be crucial for supporting rapid decision-making in areas such as defense, climate security, crisis and disaster management, and sustainable energy transitions. Marble already provides advanced data analysis services, including object detection for situational intelligence, terrain analysis, trafficability assessment, coastal asset monitoring, and land cover classification.

In addition to the space infrastructure, Marble is developing an analytics platform that converts multi-source data into actionable insights. As the constellation expands, the integration of these components will create a robust solution for decision support in defense, civil security, and critical infrastructure sectors.

"To make better decisions, data access must be immediate and actionable," says Robert Hook, co-founder and CEO of Marble Imaging. "Europe and many of its global partners lack this capability today. We at Marble are determined to close this gap, and Cherry's trust helps us achieve this faster."

Marble's first satellite, Marble Sat-1, is fully funded, has completed pre-flight testing, and is scheduled for launch in early 2027. It is designed to capture imagery at up to 0.7 m spatial resolution in the visible and near-infrared spectrum, as well as gather data in the short wave infrared spectrum. The new funding will accelerate the scaling of the constellation, with a goal of 30 satellites by 2030.

"Europe needs its own eyes in space, and Marble Imaging is building them. They are using advanced technology to turn pixels into answers, exactly what government and defense customers need. This team has spent their careers in the industry and knows what it takes to build something very big. The product Marble will deliver doesn't exist in Europe yet, but we're convinced it has to," says Filip Dames, Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures.