SpaceTY, Yunyao Aerospace Raise 1.8 Billion Yuan for Improving Earth Imaging Capabilities
Separate funding rounds from the two firms are planned to improve commercial images and data for customers taken from orbit.
In the first half of April, SpaceTY (天仪研究院)1 and Yunyao Aerospace (云遥宇航)2, two commercial enterprises that have worked together as recently as September 2025, have completed separate new capital raises with a combined total of over 1.8 billion Yuan (263.9 million United States Dollars, as of April 13th) for improving Earth imaging capabilities.
Reported on April 10th by Eastmoney (东方财富), SpaceTY has raised 1.3 billion Yuan (190.6 million United States Dollars) via the sale of company shares to several capital firms and investment enterprises, said to have demonstrated continued market confidence in the company. The new capital raised will be used to upgrade SpaceTY’s existing capabilities through three focus areas:
Deepening expertise in satellite manufacturing to enable spacecraft mass production and affordability.
Accelerating the commercialization of spacecraft data services, while exploring industry-specific applications, and expanding relevant partnerships.
Increasing coordination through spacecraft manufacturing, management, and utilization for end-to-end spacecraft solutions3.
Investor confidence was claimed to have come from the ‘mastering’ of synthetic aperture radar imaging satellites, able to utilize interferometric synthetic aperture radar techniques to detect millimeter-level changes of an imaged environment. Additionally, related onboard computing and laser communication links enable greater spacecraft data services. Some satellites to demonstrate those technologies were launched in May 2025.
The confidence also comes despite U.S. sanctions in place since February 2023 for allegedly selling imagery to the Russian Wagner Group, which has limited the company’s operations in the West. Changguang Satellite Technology Co Ltd (长光卫星技术股份有限公司), a similar satellite imaging enterprise, was hit with the same allegations later the same year.
A week earlier, on April 3rd, Yunyao Aerospace completed its ‘B+’ funding round, raising over 500 million Yuan (73.3 million United States Dollars) from a variety of provincial, municipal, and market investment vehicles. One of those was directed by the government of Huishan (惠山区) district, Wuxi (无锡市), Jiangsu (江苏) province, after the company opened a local subsidiary.
With the new funding, Yunyao Aerospace plans to improve the capabilities of its synthetic aperture radar imaging instruments while bringing more of the enabling systems and technologies into internal development and production, which will be used to explore new data-based services for collected information. Part of the capital will also be used to launch further satellites for the company’s GNSS radio occultation-based meteorological constellation.
That constellation will eventually consist of ninety spacecraft in low Earth and sun-synchronous orbit, designed to be small, lightweight, and easy to proliferate for greater accuracy. Since the start of 2025, at least thirty-four existing satellites4 in the constellation have been providing data to the China Meteorological Administration (中国气象局) to improve national weather forecasting.
Meanwhile, Changguang Satellite Technology Co Ltd expanded its Jilin-1 (吉林一号) constellation on April 14th with eight more satellites. A post-launch statement mentioned, for the first time, that the Earth imaging satellites are now capable of targeting and capturing images of other spacecraft in orbit, almost seven months after announcing intent to develop needed systems.
Full business name Changsha Tianyi Space Science and Technology Research Institute (长沙天仪空间科技研究院有限公司).
Full business name Tianjin Yunyao Aerospace Technology Co Ltd (天津云遥宇航科技有限公司).
As in customers could choose to buy a spacecraft, have it managed by SpaceTY, or to buy data collected by SpaceTY spacecraft.
Some instruments to assist with the Yunyao constellation are hosted on other companies’ satellites, for example, several via Changguang Satellite Technology Co Ltd.