B (10:41)

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A (11:50)

Just before the holidays, I had the pleasure of catching up with John Serafini, the the CEO of Hawkeye 360. I'll let John introduce himself and the company.

C (12:04)

I'm John Serafini. I'm the founder and CEO of a company named Hawkeye360. It's about a decade old. We started in 2015 timeframe. We just hit 10 years. The company performs on orbit commercial signals intelligence. We have a constellation of 30 plus satellites that very uniquely flying clusters of three. So think one satellite out front, a second satellite behind a couple hundred kilometers. You're talking about 550 or so kilometers in low earth orbit and then a third satellite that oscillates back and forth between the two in a cross track maneuver. And that satellite architecture allows us to geolocate signals basically any signal emitting on the face of the earth or in the air or in space. Above a watt in power generally between 30 MHz and 18 GHz. We can detect it, we can process it, we can geolocate it, we can analyze it and we can convert that into actionable intelligence for our customers. And our customers are principally governments, defense, intelligence, national security, some humanitarian and sustainability applications as well, but were really built from the bottom up to support government users. Now as for myself, I've been a National security oriented venture capitalist and small company operator for about 20 years. Previously I was a US army infantry officer and a proud graduate of the United States military camp.

A (13:38)

Well, it's so wonderful to speak with you and meet you, John. Hawkeye360 is such an incredible company. And you all have just closed some fantastic news. Both completing the acquisition of Innovative Signal Analysis and also closing a Series E. Congratulations. I'm wondering if you can walk me through both these pieces of news.

C (13:58)

Yeah, thank you. So much. Enormous value created when we closed those deals and they represent, geez, in some cases, two years worth of work. We've long been the modern of ISA. It's a wonderful company that for 30 years has been supporting the US defense customer base in providing the very best processing of certain types of space based RF data and converting that into intelligence products for the US government. So it's a company with an exquisite set of technologies in processing that we're very excited to be able to acquire. Very infrequently do you see an acquisition occur that's so perfectly fit between two companies? Right. We have our own commercial constellation of satellites that produces RF data. We have our own commercial platform for processing and analyzing that data. And ISA is truly the best in the world at doing the processing off of certain other types of data that when fused together it makes our own processing capabilities that much better for our customers, both the US Government and now. We'll be able to better classify different signals, be able to automate the detection of new signal of interest waveforms, and be able to perform geolocation at even better rates than previously was available. So from a strategic fit, this is a home run now to finance it because a great company like ISA is not cheap, we need to go off and raise some capital. Recognizing that we're further along in our development and that the debt markets are available to us, we wanted to kind of split the cost between debt and equity. And so we were able to raise a Series E round from a phenomenal new investor named Center 15 and then couple them with a fellow co lead in Night Dragon who's been a great investor for us for the past five years. And they co led the Series E round together along with some other investors. With that we then paired a significant amount of debt from excellent lenders SVB and Hercules. So those organizations coming together provide the capital in part for us to acquire the company and off we go.

A (16:23)

Fantastic. Well, thank you for that fantastic context. And I'm wondering, just going back to the acquisition of ISA before we'll get into sort of the funding side of things. Both are fascinating threads. I'd love if you could help me understand the importance of understanding complex RF activity. This seems to dovetail really well with the acquisition of ISA and also what Hawk i360 has been doing. The environment is ever noisier and you all are very well known for helping people understand and cut through that noise. So can you help me understand that a bit?

C (16:54)

Yeah. So I mean, think of basically two value chains. On the commercial side, you've got the paradigm of Hawkeye putting satellites into space. We own 30 plus satellites in space that generate an enormous amount of RF data. It's all commercial, it's all privately owned by Hawkeye. And then below that in the value chain is Hawkeye doing all of that and analyzing that data, converting it into actionable intelligence products. And we have a suite of different offerings from RAW IQ data all the way to finish intelligence products for certain domains that we offer to customers. That's one value chain. On the second, think about the US Government paradigm where the US Government spends a significant amount of money with traditional defense industrial based entities like Northrop, Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing, et cetera, to build certain types of, of sensors. Those sensors generate data and those that data gets analyzed and processed by companies. The very best of those companies in our mindset is this company, isa. So you have a paradigm now of where Hawkeye dominates the commercial value chain, not just collection, but processing. It now has a really important position within the US Government chain for signals intelligence, where we're now doing the processing work for certain US government customers. I think that that collectively matching those two together enables us to really unlock a lot of value for our customers.

A (18:20)

And I'm wondering about that processing, what the two year, five year, the look ahead for that looks like in terms of capabilities because again, the potential there is huge. And I imagine you all are busy planning around that too.

C (18:33)

Yeah. So one of the reasons for the acquisition, Maria, was this is shovel ready. The technologies can be integrated together, they're very nicely overlapping and we can start generating incremental value for our customers, both the US government and international, right off the bat. I mean, there's a little bit of time of technical development work that's gotta be invested. But we've done a lot of work to analyze the value of their processing and how well it fits with our RF data to feel extremely confident that this is gonna be a one plus one equals a lot more than two outcome for the company. So great acquisition for both ISA and for Hawkeye and hopefully as well for our customers.

A (19:17)

Thank you for that and I'd love to switch a little bit to sort of the investment side of things. Was very interested and I know Nightdragon's been a big supporter of Hawkeye360 for quite some time. If you could tell me about a little bit about the investors that were part of this round, including Nightdragon, I'd love to hear about that.

C (19:34)

Sure. Well, I can't ask for a better set of investors than we have in the Series E round. Night Dragon led our Series C round. This is Dave Dewalt and Ken Gonzalez and they've been fantastic members of our cap table and in both cases have been a wonderful provider of corporate governance on our board. I've been blessed to have Night Dragon on our cap table and I wish for all of my defense tech peer companies for them to have investors as great as Night Dragon. So that's thing one, thing two is I'm exceptionally pleased to welcome Center 15 to our cap table. Ian Weiner is the is the lead here at center 15. He's been investing in fantastic defense technology companies for many years. Extremely thoughtful and very well known on Wall street given his background there and the breadth of his of his limited partners is very significant and will be very helpful to Hawkeye as we grow further. So exceptionally pleased to have Ian involved with Hawkeye as well as the co lead at center 15. So those two together, plus our fantastic LPs who have been investing in Hawkeye since the beginning, such as SHIELD Capital and others, we're very fortunate to have them participating so meaningfully in the Series E round.

A (20:53)

And I'm curious, something that was mentioned in the release about the Series E was about how the acquisition actually I should mention with isa, the big differentiator here seems to be on improving signal processing as you've mentioned several times, as opposed to just increasing satellite capacity. Can you talk a bit about that differentiation? Because it is an interesting angle and we often hear more about just like more satellite capacity and this seems to be about also getting a lot smarter, right?

C (21:20)

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean ultimately they're not mutually exclusive. We need to build lots of collection capacity and lots of new sensors in space as well as other domains. Right. Like you know, we want to dominate from GEO all the way down to ground. We want to be the best in the world at collecting lots of different types of RF data and fusing it all together and doing the processing and the analysis. And so that will include over time I would believe sensors terrestrially, sensors aerially, sensors in space, and being able to operate those at cost effective means we don't want to invest a significant amount of capital for stuff that's not unique and not cost efficient. And so we're very thoughtful about the sensors that we build. And we have a robust plan for building out our architecture over the next couple of years. But that's definitively on its own pathway. And that architecture has been well known for us for a while and we're executing against our playbook to do that. At the same time, there's two sides of this coin. There's the RF data and that best in class RF raw data that we collect with these sensors. And there's what we can do with it. Convert that into something that's understood and valuable to customers. I mean, RF data is not understandable by a typical human unless you analyze it through the certain processing tools that we have available to us. It's not like an image where you can take a picture from space and look at and you're like, okay, there's 15 cars in that parking lot. I understand that intuitively. If I deliver to you raw IQ data from space, you're looking at a bunch of weird stuff. It's not until you actually do the processing and the analysis that you can start to extract intelligence about what might be occurring. Which is always related to human activity. Right. Because a lake doesn't naturally emit rf, a bear doesn't key a mic. It comes when you see RF activity. You know it's from a human or some set of humans or some set of vehicles or other apparatus that's tied to human activity. And if you look at long enough, as you know, you start to understand human activities and you can start to extract information about or assess information about intentions. Which is really the holy grail here is when you've developed an exquisite set of sensors and you compare that to really great processing capabilities, the faster you can get access to that data and the faster the revisit rate. And then be the very best at geolocating those, those emitters and converting that into actionable intelligence. That's the basis of a, of extremely high quality, competitive, long term going concern for signals intelligence, which is our goal.

A (24:04)

And you've mentioned in our conversation a lot of things that I think would be considered force multipliers. And I'm curious what other things you're considering or thinking about for the future that are force multipliers like that.

C (24:14)

Sure, sure. So a couple of items. I mean, obviously getting the revisit rate down is an important metric. So the, the more satellites you have overhead, depending upon what orbits they're in, the faster you can be over any given spot on Earth. Right? So that you can increase the, the tactical relevance of that data. Secondly, how quickly can you get the data down to the ground? Right, you can address that through data, the ground station densifications. You can address that through onboard processing. You can address that through crosslinks and being able to use mesh relay networks to move that data down to the war fighter, the intelligence analyst, that much faster. Those are two key levers that we're constantly pushing on. If you were to unpack our long term vision for our architecture. You see, we're constantly looking to optimize the revisit rate and we're constantly looking for ways in which to get that data down to the ground faster. So that's on the space based part of the sensor part because you know, we are going to look at other sensor types, but at the same time the ability to process that data and convert it into the actionable intelligence using artificial intelligence, you know, AI, machine learning, that's, that's extremely valuable to us. And that comes to the third lever, which is the amazing people that I get a chance to work with. And we have today, now 400 individuals working within Hawkeye and, and ISA together combined. These are some of the world's experts in signals intelligence who live in, who just live to access RF data and convert it and to process it. And so we've been able to pull together 400 of these exceptional, thoughtful individuals. And we look forward to working with all of them into the future.

A (26:12)

We'll be right back. Welcome back. Some cold water today on the idea that the Jovian moon Europa could maybe have some life under its icy shell. This fascinating moon, a little smaller than our own, is considered one of our best bets for finding life elsewhere in our solar system. So much so that in 2024 NASA launched the Europa Clipper mission to investigate those chances. And there was a new study published this week in the journal Nature Communications that took a closer look at Europa's ocean bottom, where life might actually be on this moon. And the study modeled the tectonic and volcanic activity there. According to the study, they believe that Europa's seafloor is super solid and probably doesn't have any major landforms, ridges or troughs, any kind of nook or cranny or fault line where any kind of underwater volcanic activity might occur and a super solid seafloor might sound like a good thing, but for the potential formation of life, unfortunately it is not. Why? Well, planetary scientist Paul Byrne of Washington University in St. Louis, who is the lead author of this study, explains it this way, and he says this On Earth, tectonic activity such as fracturing and faulting exposes fresh rock to the environment, where chemical reactions, principally involving water, generate chemicals such as methane that microbial life can use. In other words, our more fragile and active seafloor created more opportunities for the right chemical reactions to occur and eventually for microbial life to sustain itself and flourish. But according to this study, it seems like Europa is too far from Jupiter for the planet's gravitational pull to deform, crack, nook, and cranny ify Europa's ocean floor. Well, we'll find out much more about Europa and potentially validate this study pretty soon in any case, as the NASA Europa Clipper mission is currently en route to that moon and is expected to arrive for its series of flybys in 2031. And that is T minus Brought to you by N2K CyberWire we'd love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like our show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to space2k.com we're proud that N2K CyberWire is part of the daily routine of the most influential leaders and operators in the public and private sector. From the Fortune 500 to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies, N2K helps space and cybersecurity professionals grow, learn and stay informed. As the nexus for discovery and connection, we bring you the people, the technology and the ideas shaping the future of secure innovation. Learn how@n2k.com N2K's senior producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We are mixed by Elliot Peltzman and and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our Executive producer is Jennifer Ibin. Peter Kilpe is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thank you for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

C (30:02)

T minus.

B (30:18)

If you only attend one cybersecurity conference this year, make it RSAC 2026. It's happening March 23rd through the 26th in San Francisco, bringing together the global security community for four days of expert insights, hands on learning and real innovation. I'll say this plainly, I never miss this conference. The ideas and conversations stay with me all year. Join thousands of practitioners and leaders tackling today's toughest challenges and shaping what comes next. Register today@rsaconference.com cyberwire26 I'll see you in San Francisco.