CIT GAP Funds bolster Virginia’s NOVI

More specifically, according to media reports, NOVI, launched in 2017, will use the undisclosed amount of capital from CIT GAP Funds to scale business and sales operations and expand the development of their data analytics capabilities with increased engineering power. This development is expected to target the areas of Earth imaging, IoT, weather forecasting, and high-bandwidth connectivity. According to CIT GAP Funds, the industry stands divided between a host of low-cost commodity component suppliers, and larger contractors who supply high-performance, custom satellites that cost millions of dollars. NOVI plans to close this gap by generating space-based data rapidly and cost-effectively by launching hundreds of low earth orbit (LEO) constellations. NOVI’s highly-integrated hardware aids to reduce the size of spacecraft required to place a payload into orbit, which drastically cuts down the amount of capital needed for deployments. NOVI Partner Dr. Amit Mehra said, “We are entering a crowded space that has several existing manufacturers of small satellite components and providers of data analytics services, but with the support of CIT GAP Funds we will be able to illustrate the benefits of integrated architectures to the industry.” The founding members of NOVI are two CalTech graduates with 35 years of deep domain expertise and technical expertise in the field of spacecraft design, manufacturing, launch and operations, and related data analytics of geospatial imagery, according to media reports, and all product design elements and associated IP are cleanly owned by NOVI. CIT GAP Funds makes seed-stage equity investments in Virginia-based technology, clean tech and life science companies with a high potential for achieving rapid growth and generating significant economic return for entrepreneurs, co-investors and the Commonwealth of Virginia.