Skydweller Aero Inc., a U.S.-Spanish aerospace company developing solar powered aircraft for defense and commercial industries, announced it has raised $40 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round. This new figure reflects $8 million of additional funding after the aerospace company previously reported its Series A close in 2019. The financing was led by Leonardo S.p.A, Marlinspike Capital, and Advection Growth Capital.

This round also marks a critical partnership with Palantir Technologies, a publicly traded U.S. company that builds enterprise data platforms for use by organisations with complex and sensitive data environments. Skydweller will use Palantir's Foundry platform, which provides state-of-the-art analytics tools to process information at scale and on the edge, to rapidly fuse vast amounts of complex data. Palantir's expertise and capabilities within the aerospace and defense markets make it an ideal partner to Skydweller's information collection services and solutions.

"Skydweller has seen tremendous interest from investors, providing us the opportunity to exceed our initial fundraising goals. This points to significant market growth and a great need for this technology across the commercial and government industries," said Skydweller CEO Dr. Robert Miller. "We are also delighted and honored to announce Palantir as a key investor and partner, as we work to develop the next generation of persistent airborne solutions."

With this capital, Skydweller will continue to accelerate the development and maturation of its autonomous systems technology, to be applied during flight testing for current and prospective customers. The company will also begin designing and manufacturing air vehicles and complete its information and intelligence collection service offerings.

"We see Skydweller as the next generation platform of renewably powered aircraft that can be leveraged for intelligence, telecommunications and geospatial data and more," said President of Palantir USG and CTO for Palantir Technologies Akash Jain. "This partnership demonstrates Palantir's continued investment in unlocking the world's growing data challenges."

The Series A raise builds on the company's recent momentum in which it announced its first public contract award with the U.S. Navy's Naval Air Systems Comment (NAVAIR) for over $5 million to demonstrate the capabilities and performance of their zero-carbon emission solution for long endurance flight.