How it started
History
The company was founded in 2016 by Payam Banazadeh, a former engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, and William Walter Woods. Capella initially received funding from the Defense Innovation Unit. As of January 2024, the company had more than 200 employees and raised venture capital from investors such as Canaan Partners, Data Collective, Pear VC, and Spark Capital.
Capella designs, manufactures and operates its fleet of SAR satellites to provide high-resolution, all-weather imagery to the U.S. government and commercial customers. Sequoia, the first-generation satellite, launched in August 2020. Six second-generation Whitney satellites were launched between January 2021 and January 2022 on SpaceX Transporter rideshare missions into a polar Sun-synchronous orbit.
Capella Space has raised about $250 million in total equity and debt financing since its founding in 2016. In May 2025, IonQ, a quantum computing startup, announced their intent to purchase Capella Space in an all stocks transaction. The acquisition was completed in July 2025.
From Wikipedia’s article on Capella Space, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3