World View Enters New Remote Sensing Market After SPAC Announcement

World View, a company developing stratospheric balloons for tourism and other applications, has released new information on February 3rd through an investor presentation on what it believes will be its largest market over the next several years. According to the company, remote sensing and imagery data taken from its high altitude balloon platform will be the primary business the company will partake in as it seeks to compete with satellite data sources. 

This announcement comes less than one month after World View stated that it would go public via a merger with a SPAC (special purpose acquisitions company) called Leo Holdings Corp. II.  Through this merger, World View would receive over $100 million in proceeds and be valued at $350 million. 

Slide #10 from World View's investor presentation

In the investor presentation, the company goes through multiple reasons as to why they believe their so-called “stratollite” balloon platform could fill a key gap in the market.  World View states that they have shown that their system can perform persistent high resolution imagery of between 5-7 cm resolution for a period of at least 45 days, with the imagery taken at an altitude of over 20 km. This compares to high resolution satellite imagery of ~30 cm, taken from altitudes of more than 300 km. The company also has an infrared imaging option for its customers and plans to offer a radar system in the near future.

Who Is World View?

World View was initially founded a decade ago with the goal of providing high altitude tourism for customers who would enjoy up to 12 hour-long rides in the Explorer Space Capsule slung underneath a balloon. The company later switched to uncrewed balloon platforms, but returned to the idea of tourism in 2021 with the announcement of a new capsule that they began selling tickets for. So far, World View has received 1200 reservations from people wishing to fly in the future.

However the company seems to have put these aspirations on the back burner for the time being. Tourism, along with a couple other applications related to human flight and research, were only mentioned at the end of the investor presentation as “future applications”, with no hint at when tourists would fly or how much revenue that business would generate for the company.