TAMPA, Fla. — Canada’s EarthDaily Analytics has secured a $60 million loan to kickstart delayed plans to expand its imaging constellation from one to 10 satellites.
Announcing the financing from Trinity Capital July 31, secured against satellite hardware, the Vancouver-based operator said it now has all the funding needed for a global constellation originally ordered from Loft Orbital for deployment in 2023.
The remaining multispectral satellites are slated to launch across multiple rideshare missions in 2026, EarthDaily CEO Don Osborne told SpaceNews, with specific launches still being finalized with SpaceX.
“Our launch cadence is carefully planned to ensure optimal orbital phasing and temporal consistency, which is critical to the performance of our high-frequency, broad-area change detection system,” Osborne said via email.
“The equipment financing supports the final build and deployment of the EarthDaily Constellation, helping us maintain schedule momentum and ensure technical excellence as we complete the remaining satellites and move toward full operations.
“It also enables us to optimize our capital structure and reflects continued confidence from institutional investors in our business and long-term vision.”
The full constellation was initially pushed out two years to 2025 to improve its compatibility with advances in artificial intelligence.
Osborne said the latest shift to 2026 reflects “a combination of manufacturing complexities and rideshare scheduling constraints, rather than a strategic change.”
SpaceX launched the initial satellite for the constellation to low Earth orbit last month. EarthDaily said the spacecraft made first contact shortly after launch and was healthy after deploying solar arrays successfully.
EarthDaily spacecraft are based on a modified 200-kilogram OneWeb broadband satellite platform, which Loft ordered from Airbus. Switzerland’s ABB is providing multispectral imagers capable of capturing data in 22 spectral bands for the fleet, which is designed to cover 98% of Earth’s landmass at a resolution down to five meters.
Osborne said the company is already seeing strong interest in the analytics it can generate from its proprietary data source, alongside data from third-party satellites such as Europe’s Sentinel.
“More than 300 customers have already engaged through our early adopter programs to access sample data from our first satellite,” he said.
“These users span a range of sectors and are helping validate the unique value of our AI-ready Earth observation data ahead of full constellation deployment. We are also actively advancing presale data contracts as we build toward commercial operations.”
Last year, EarthDaily acquired geospatial analytics provider Descartes Labs to strengthen its AI-powered imagery offerings across the insurance, energy, mining and U.S. defense markets.
Descartes Labs was previously owned by private equity firm Antarctica Capital, which also owns EarthDaily and formed it in 2021 after acquiring satellite designs, software, customer contracts and intellectual property during UrtheCast’s restructuring process.