Astraea raises $6.5M for geospatial software

Astraea closed a $6.5 million Series A for its geospatial software, which is aimed at remotely monitoring renewable energy infrastructure, carbon offset programs, conservation projects and other sectors.

Why it matters: The funding shows the demand for monitoring distributed resources such as wind and solar, and highlights the advanced technological demands that renewables require.

The details: Asset manager Aligned Climate Capital co-led the round with a $3 million investment. Carbon Drawdown Collective also led.

• PitchBook pegged Astraea's valuation at $23.6m as of January.

How it works: Astraea describes itself as a SaaS that analyzes geospatial data gathered from more than 1,000 satellites.

• Its target industries include agriculture and real estate, in addition to the energy, conservation and carbon finance sectors.

Zoom out: If using satellites in the climate space sounds familiar, it's because a number of startups and nonprofits seek to harness the monitoring capabilities they offer:

• The Carbon Call initiative is working to track emissions, NCX to develop a carbon offset marketplace with forests, Pachama to develop its own forest-related carbon credit program, Cloud to Street to more effectively map flooding for insurance, Kayrros to measure climate impacts by industry, Planet to improve Moody's ESG data — to name just a few.

What they're saying: "We have to build and deploy much more renewable energy, and that renewable energy has to be distributed," Aligned Capital CEO Peter Davidson tells Axios. "That means we have to locate things and site things all over the place at increasingly smaller scale and increasingly farther from people."