17 April 2024
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CloudFerro backed by
Innova Capital in further European expansion
Press release
Innova Capital has successfully acquired minority stakes in CloudFerro, a leading provider of cloud services to the European space sector, marking another transaction under its seventh fund. Innova aims to support the company in bolstering its organizational structure, as well as leveraging prior experience in international expansion and future acquisitions. Thanks to this deal, the fund is expanding its presence in the European high-tech sector.
Founded in 2015 in Warsaw, Poland, CloudFerro provides next-generation cloud computing services dedicated to specific industries, such as the European space sector, climate research, and science. The company has a team of over 200 employees and own cloud infrastructure located in data centres across Europe. CloudFerro plays a leading role in the development of key European initiatives in the satellite Earth Observation (EO) sector. These comprise, among others, building and operating one of the world's largest EO data repositories – Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem, which is a reference data source for the European Copernicus satellite constellation. Destination Earth Data Lake aimed at ensuring data access and big data processing in the cloud to build highly accurate digital replicas of Earth is another important project implemented by CloudFerro. The company has also successfully developed and operates the CREODIAS.eu platform that enables immediate access to Copernicus EO data, its processing in the cloud, and other related services.
Over the last three years, CloudFerro has nearly quadrupled the scale of operations in Europe, thus becoming a regional leader in its market field. The company’s ongoing cooperation with renowned institutions, such as the European Space Agency, EUMETSAT, ECMWF, the German AeroSpace Agency (DLR), the Polish Space Agency (POLSA), and Mercator Ocean is the proof of the highest-quality of specialised services offered.
“With an acquisition of a significant minority stake in CloudFerro, we have entered a very attractive market, expected to enjoy a strong growth (+20% per annum) over the next few years driven by supportive mega-trends. We believe that Innova’s expertise and close cooperation with the company will prove beneficial in enhancing its position in the European space market and opening up new acquisition opportunities. These can help CloudFerro to expand its offering by adding complementary solutions and competencies within Earth Observation, but also enable a faster entry into new verticals, such as healthcare or science, where experience in processing large image data sets is highly valuable,” said Krzysztof Kulig, Senior Partner who supervised the transaction on Innova Capital behalf.
“We believe that our co-operation with Innova Capital is opening a new chapter in CloudFerro’s growth and the European expansion. We hope to leverage our – CloudFerro’s – competencies and resources together with our new partner’s resources and capacity to become a European champion of open source big data cloud computing. We want to strengthen even further our position in the satellite Earth Observation market and to make us a partner of choice in the area. Simultaneously we are going to research and develop opportunities in other big data related fields. All in all, we want to see Innova’s investment as a marriage of the leaders in their fields,” pointed dr. Maciej Krzyżanowski, the CEO of CloudFerro.
The key factor ensuring the dynamic growth of the market in which CloudFerro operates is a significant increase in the applications of Earth Observation data used for climate change tracking, marine environmental monitoring, spatial and urban planning, forest and agricultural management, and many more. The sector also benefits from the rapid development of modern satellite technologies. Using extensive experience and building on market trends, Innova-backed CloudFerro is planning to focus, among others, on the expansion of product & services offering and building top-notch competencies in the area of AI, thus opening up new growth and innovation prospects.
About CloudFerro
CloudFerro provides innovative cloud services. The company delivers and operates cloud computing platforms for demanding markets, such as the European space sector, climate research and science. Its broad experience and in-depth expertise include storing and processing big data sets, such as multipetabyte repositories of Earth Observation satellite data. CloudFerro has been trusted by leading European institutions, businesses and scientific entities from various big-data-processing market sectors. This is the only Polish company in the space sector that acts as a prime contractor to the following institutions: European Space Agency (ESA), European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), German Aerospace Centre (DLR), to name a few. The company has been recognized with the European Earth Observation Company 2023 Award by the European Association of Remote Sensing Companies EARSC for outstanding achievements and innovations in the Earth Observation services sector in Europe.
About Innova Capital
Innova Capital is an independent private equity adviser operating from Poland and investing in buyouts in mid-sized enterprises doing business in Central and Eastern Europe. Since its inception in 1994, Innova Capital has invested close to EUR 1.4 billion in almost 70 companies across 10 countries in the region. Innova has been recognized by the Polish Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (PSIK) as PE Management Firm of the Year 2023.
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