Why Greencode invested in Ubotica

Last month, we announced our investment in Ubotica, the Dublin-based space technology company pioneering Orbital AI. Leading their $11 million funding round alongside Act Venture Capital, and joined by existing investor Atlantic Bridge, we are proud to back Ubotica's mission to bring real-time, AI-powered intelligence to satellites monitoring the world's oceans and beyond.

"Resilience is a key topic for Europe in the coming years. Securing critical infrastructure in harbors and off-shore is crucial. Ubotica's edge AI technology enables satellite constellations to detect threats and anomalies early, anywhere across vast ocean areas, creating both a strategic security capability and a compelling commercial opportunity," comments Greencode’s Managing Partner Terhi Vapola.

About Ubotica

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Ubotica builds Orbital AI – artificial intelligence that runs directly on board the satellite itself. Most Earth observation satellites capture imagery, beam the raw data down to Earth, and wait hours or days for an analyst to interpret it. Ubotica processes the imagery in orbit and delivers decision-grade intelligence in minutes.

The technology has already been proven at a meaningful scale. Working with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the European Space Agency, Ubotica has deployed more than 30 Earth observation AI models across multiple satellite missions, run hundreds of thousands of inferences in orbit, and achieved a 100% mission success rate. That record includes a world first: a spacecraft that autonomously identified a target and reoriented itself to capture it.

Its flagship product, Live Maritime Intelligence (LMI), fuses data from optical, SAR and RF sensors into a continuously updated picture of maritime risk, then autonomously tasks the right satellites to investigate, cutting response times from days to minutes.

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The opportunity

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Europe's maritime infrastructure, including undersea communication cables, offshore energy assets, pipelines and strategic shipping routes, is under growing pressure. Shadow fleets, dark vessels, sanctions evasion and suspected sabotage have turned the ocean into a security problem too large for any single country to monitor with existing tools. Exclusive economic zones are often larger than a nation's own landmass, and conventional satellite surveillance simply cannot keep pace with threats that can emerge and disappear within hours.

Maritime is only the starting point. In the long-term, Ubotica’s technology can be redirected toward other real-time Earth observation challenges, opening the door to applications well beyond ocean surveillance. 

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The team

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Ubotica is led by a team of seasoned entrepreneurs with a rare depth of edge AI knowledge and commercial execution capability. Ubotica was founded in Dublin in 2017 by Fintan Buckley (CEO), John Bourke (CFO) and Aubrey Dunne (CTO), and the leadership team includes Sean Mitchell (CCO) and David Moloney (Chief Scientist). Bourke, Mitchell and Moloney all previously built Movidius, the machine-vision chip company Intel acquired for €300 million in 2016.

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The impact

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Subsea cables and offshore energy infrastructure carry the data and power that keep Europe's grid and markets running. Ubotica gives operators the ability to spot and respond to threats against that infrastructure in near real time.

The same Orbital AI platform can eventually power wildfire detection, disaster response and environmental monitoring, turning satellites into active sensors for the planet's most urgent risks.

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What’s next

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The new funding will accelerate the commercial rollout of Live Maritime Intelligence to governments and maritime agencies across Europe and beyond, as Ubotica moves from a decade of flight-proven technology into scaled commercial deployment. We believe Orbital AI represents a genuine platform shift in how the world observes and protects itself, starting with the ocean and eventually reaching far beyond it. We're proud to back Ubotica as the team brings that vision to scale.

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Building something transformational? Get in touch: hello@greencode.vc

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