SEOUL, December 23 (AJP) - Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) said on Tuesday that Meissa, a drone- and satellite-based geospatial artificial intelligence company in which it is a strategic investor, has completed a 9.7 billion won ($7 million) pre-IPO equity financing round.
The deal brings Meissa’s cumulative funding to 35 billion won, the company said, adding that the proceeds will be used to upgrade its business operations. Meissa is targeting an IPO in the second half of 2026.
As Meissa’s second-largest shareholder, KAI has invested about 8 billion won to date, while gradually expanding technical cooperation with the company across defense software and space-related projects.
The latest investment aligns with KAI’s mid- to long-term strategy to internalize core technologies by combining Meissa’s geospatial AI capabilities with KAI’s major aerospace and defense hardware platforms, the company said.
Meissa is developing a satellite operations and preprocessing solution designed to collect and analyze large volumes of imagery generated by KAI’s next-generation mid-sized and small-satellite programs in real time, converting the data into immediately usable information.
The company said it plans to build an end-to-end infrastructure covering satellite data processing, distribution and utilization, and to strengthen its competitiveness in the satellite imagery solutions market.
KAI also plans to integrate Meissa’s automatic 3D map generation technology into its flight simulator hardware to create more realistic virtual training environments and internalize a digital twin solution for simulators.
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