Helix Geospace has raised £3 million seed funding in a round led by Bloc Ventures and supported by the UK Innovation and Science Seed Fund (UKI2S), managed by Midven, part of Future Planet Capital, and private investors including a group of sophisticated HNWI’s introduced by Tony Best, who’s background is in finance and high-end electronics manufacturing.
Helix builds precision antennas designed and manufactured to the highest specifications that enable GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) product designers to create the smallest, most accurate positioning, navigation and time synchronization products. PNT (Position, Navigation and Timing) services delivered by satellite systems have become the linchpin of global economies, with critical infrastructure, transportation, cyber-security and defence being dependent on them. These dependencies are vulnerable to the operating environments – busy cities and crowded RF spectra – and are under threat from malicious attack. Helix Geospace has invented and developed antenna technology that defends against these vulnerabilities and threats.
Helix’s patented DielectriX™ antennas are targeted initially to receive PNT signals from GNSS (GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, Beidou) constellations, and the Satelles STL (Satellite Time and Location) signals delivered over the Iridium constellation as well as Iridium’s voice and data network. Future antenna variants will support LEO (low earth orbit) PNT services being planned and built by private companies as well as government agencies. Key capabilities of DielectriX antennas are their ability to discriminate true satellite signals from multi-path signals, interference and jamming, delivering high performance in a compact and rugged form factor. Helix’s customers include defence, automotive, aerospace and critical infrastructure sector companies.
In addition to this £3 million round, Helix has previously raised £2.5 million investment from UKI2S and angel investors, and has participated in Wayra UK’s Intelligent Mobility Accelerator programm and Seraphim Capital’s Space Camp Mission 6. Helix has also received additional grant funding for advanced antenna development from the European Space Agency and for anti-jamming/spoofing technology from UKI2S.
As a result of this funding round, Helix CTO and DielectriX inventor, Oliver Leisten, will be growing his talented team of RF engineers, and COO Nick Filler, who had led operations groups at Nokia and Jaguar Land Rover, will build Helix’s operations team to drive the manufacturing ramp-up.
Filed Under: Antennas / Terminals, Business Moves, Funding, GNSS, Investments