Satellite manufacturer, operator, and services provider Sidus Space [SIDU] on Tuesday said it has acquired Exo-Space, which supplies its customers with artificial intelligence capabilities at the edge for on-orbit applications.
Sidus said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the asset purchase was $468,000 and the sellers also received nearly four million shares of stock in options. Sidus’ stock trades on the NASDAQ and closed at 17 cents per share on Tuesday, unchanged from Monday.
Sidus, which is based in Cape Canaveral, Fla., designs and manufactures cube and small satellites, and plans to launch its first satellite later this year to offer hyperspectral and multispectral imaging solutions for customers. The company has nine LizzieSat missions planned over the next 18 months that will be launched by SpaceX.
California-based Exo-Space’s products include the FeatherBox compact data processing unit for AI applications on-orbit, the FeatherWare hardware agnostic intelligent middleware for hosting machine learning applications and analytics on-orbit, and FeatherApps, custom-trained machine learning algorithms for space applications.
Sidus said that Exo-Space’s capabilities and operations complement its established relationships with the Defense Department and the intelligence community. It also said that Exo-Space’s capabilities will integrate into its business lines and allow it to offer the hardware to third-parties.
“This accretive acquisition expands our talent, technology, and total addressable market,” Carol Craig, founder and CEO of Sidus, said in a statement. “Along with sales contracts and existing AI technology, the transaction includes the acquisition of Exp-Space’s collective experience in AI and machine learning. This transaction provides the opportunity for us to enhance our presence in the Earth and space observation markets by providing actionable solutions for our customers’ needs as opposed to just raw data.”
Sidus said that in addition to the cash and stock, the acquisition includes performance bonus incentives for Exp-Space’s assets. Sidus said that Exo-Space has a revenue stream of commercial and government contracts through 2024.