AIRMO Raises €5M Seed Funding to Power World's Most Advanced Greenhouse Gas Monitoring System from Air and Space

Berlin / Munich / Luxembourg, March 2026 — AIRMO, the space tech startup developing the world’s most advanced greenhouse gas monitoring system, has announced a €5M seed funding round. The funding will allow AIRMO to launch its first satellite mission in 2027 and expand its airborne coverage. 

The funding round was led by Ananda Impact Ventures, alongside Unconventional Ventures, kopa ventures, Desai Ventures, Hypernova / New Venture Securities and two EQT Partners acting as strategic investors (Matthias Fackler and Francesco Starace). Existing investors are also participating in the round including Antler, Findus Ventures, E2MC and Pi Labs.

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For decades, catching methane leaks from space meant choosing between accuracy and affordability. AIRMO has solved both - building the world's first active spaceborne greenhouse gas monitoring instrument — shrinking a SWIR imager and micro-LiDAR into a small satellite platform. The result is more accurate and more affordable than anything that exists today.

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Methane emissions are responsible for 30% of global warming, yet 70% of leaks go unreported. For energy companies, this is not just an environmental problem — methane leaks cost the industry approximately $30BN every year.

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AIRMO technology is already deployed commercially on drones and aircrafts for monitoring missions across Europe, Central Asia and MENA. The world's largest energy companies (e.g. Uniper) and validators (e.g. OSCE) already using AIRMO for infrastructure monitoring. TotalEnergies supported AIRMO R&D activities at TADI since 2023.

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Daria Stepanova, CEO of AIRMO, comments: "AIRMO has a simple mission: to help operators find and stop greenhouse gas losses, starting with methane. With this funding, we move beyond validation into continuous monitoring at scale — and launching our first sensor into space is a major step toward our ambition to monitor 12 million energy assets worldwide."

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Alina Bassi, Principal at Ananda Impact Ventures, comments, “Methane leakage reduction is the most effective way to decarbonise the energy industry today. AIRMO’s ability to quantify GHG emissions from space with such high precision is a game-changer, finally solving a significant transparency problem for the energy sector. Having backed the team since inception, we are proud to continue supporting their journey as they move toward their first satellite launch.”

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The capital will be used to move AIRMO from successful pilots to scaled commercial operations. AIRMO will be launching its first satellites into space in 2027 to begin operational data delivery. AIRMO will be scaling airborne monitoring campaigns across Europe, MENA, and Central Asia, moving into routine operational monitoring and funding payload integration into Endurosat satellite. The funding will also be used to drive international expansion, with AIRMO establishing a local presence in MENA.

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Founded by Daria Stepanova — a rocket scientist and serial entrepreneur with 12 successful satellite launches to her name — AIRMO has assembled a team of world-class experts. They include Dr. Christoph Grobbel (advisor), formerly CFO and co-founder of South Pole and Terra Impact Ventures; Dr. Errico Armandillo (CSO), former ESA Head of Optoelectronics with 28 years of expertise building complex optical instruments; and David Vilaseca (CTO), with 15 years of experience in designing remote sensing space missions.

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Alexis Burdick-Horowitz, Partner at Unconventional Ventures, comments, “At seed stage, we back founders who combine deep technical credibility with a clear view of the problem they are solving. Daria is a rare example of a female founder leading at the frontier of space technology, with the expertise and ambition to tackle one of the most urgent climate challenges. That unique combination of impact and commercial relevance is why we chose to back AIRMO early.”

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Alan Poensgen, Partner at Antler, AIRMO’s first investor, comments, “We backed AIRMO at inception because we saw a team with the technical depth and grit required to tackle one of the planet's most urgent challenges. Since our initial pre-seed investment, the team has proven that AIRMO’s end-to-end methane monitoring service is not just visionary, but commercially essential for energy operators seeking reliable, actionable emissions insights. We are proud to continue our support in this seed round as they move from successful airborne validation to launching their first satellites this year, finally making the invisible problem of methane emissions visible to the world."

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Faisal Butt, Founder and Managing Partner at Pi Labs, comments, "We are at an inflection point: global energy demand is accelerating, driven by the infrastructure of our digital age and AI. Energy assets that cannot account for their emissions will increasingly struggle to attract capital and meet regulation, that is the reality the industry is waking up to. Daria saw this before most and has built the sensing technology to detect emissions at a precision the industry has never had before. We backed the team at pre-seed, and our conviction since then has only deepened - AIRMO is a testament to the calibre of founders our new fund, Pi Labs Fund IV, will continue to support.”

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Media Contact
Daria Stepanova
CEO & Co-founder, AIRMO
pr@airmo.io