Insurance companies are joining the space race, increasingly relying on satellites for their operations and in some cases contributing to recent funding rounds worth tens of millions of dollars in the satellite imaging and service sectors.
Satellite observation company ICEYE announced that it had raised another $65 million as of December—an extension of its April 2024 growth funding round of $93 million, bringing total funding to more than $500 million since its founding a decade ago.
Finland-based ICEYE’s satellite constellation offers cloud-penetrating capabilities to provide natural catastrophe monitoring with hazard and damage data to aid the disaster response. That data includes flood depth, extent, and duration and assessment of building damage within a wildfire’s perimeter.
ICEYE’s satellites see through darkness, clouds, and any environmental conditions using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology. In January, the company launched four new SAR satellites, bringing its total to 44 satellites since 2018. The company said it plans to launch more than 20 new satellites annually starting in 2025.
Satellites play a growing role in insurance by providing imagery that aids in assessing damages and claims from natural disasters, in catastrophe modeling, in evaluating exposures for underwriting, and for continuous risk monitoring of assets in remote areas, according to a report by AXA XL.
The accelerating pace of satellite launches globally, however, heightens concerns about the growing number of aging satellites in space and the increasing problem of orbital debris. Retired satellites can break apart or collide, creating debris clouds that endanger other satellites and human missions.
More than 11,000 active satellites were in orbit as of January 2025, with 6,887 belonging to telecommunications company Starlink, according to Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. More than 29,000 objects are in orbit, including dead payloads, rocket stages, satellite components, and debris.
To address the collision risk, a Seattle-area startup is building satellite servicing vehicles that can be launched into orbit to extend the life of working satellites and dispose of aging vehicles by moving them out of orbit.
Starfish Space said in November it had raised $29 million in its latest funding round, which included Munich Re and Booz Allen Hamilton. The round brings its total funding to $50 million.
Starfish says it will use the funding to develop three of its Otter satelliteservicing vehicles and to perform missions for communications satellite company Intelsat, the United States Space Force, and NASA.
The oven-sized Otter is designed to dock with satellites and use its electric propulsion system to extend their missions by keeping them in operational orbit or to deorbit them. The Otter spacecraft is expected to launch in late 2026 and to begin performing inspections for NASA in 2027. Last year, Starfish conducted a demonstration mission with its Otter Pup vehicle involving a successful flyby of one of space logistics company D-Orbit’s ION satellites. The company envisions more complex servicing missions going forward.
For its part, Italy-based D-Orbit closed a 150 million euro ($166 million) funding round in MARCH 2025, to support development of in-orbit servicing capabilities and collection and recycling of space debris.
