Demonstrates Union Square Advisors’ expertise in providing strategic M&A and capital markets advice to leading Special Purpose Acquisition Companies
On February 24, 2021, Union Square Advisors announced it served as a capital markets and strategic advisor to Osprey Technology Acquisition Corp. (“Osprey”), a special purpose acquisition company, in a definitive agreement for a business combination that would result in BlackSky Holdings, Inc. (“BlackSky”), a leading provider of real-time geospatial intelligence and global monitoring services, becoming a publicly listed company. It is anticipated that the post-closing company, BlackSky will be listed on the NYSE with the ticker symbol “BKSY”.
“Union Square Advisors is incredibly excited to have worked with the Osprey team on this transaction,” said Ted Smith, President and co-Founder, Union Square Advisors. “Our deep knowledge of the technology sector, coupled with our capital markets and M&A expertise, position us very well to help both SPAC sponsors and SPAC IPO targets achieve great outcomes. SPACs represent a very significant additional option for private companies seeking liquidity; as a result, we are continuing to work with our corporate clients as they evaluate the entire spectrum of transaction alternatives: SPAC combination, traditional IPO, direct listing, merger, or control sale to a strategic or financial buyer.”
Added Mike Meyer, Union Square Advisors Partner and Head of Capital Markets, “As SPAC sponsors pursue attractive merger targets with increasing fervor, a key challenge for them is to ensure that they find the right investors to participate in the PIPE financing that typically accompanies the de-SPACing process. Our strong relationships with a broad range of capital providing partners can be invaluable to SPAC sponsors looking to optimize the post-transaction investor roster and capital structure of their companies.”
Founded in 2014, BlackSky is a first mover in real-time Earth observation leveraging the innovative performance and economics of small satellite constellations to deliver high revisit global monitoring solutions. BlackSky’s Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning powered analytics platform derives unique insights from its constellation as well as a variety of space, IoT, and terrestrial based sensors and data feeds. BlackSky monitors global events and activities providing enhanced situational awareness for commercial and government customers worldwide.
BlackSky has established contracts with multiple government agencies in the United States and around the world. BlackSky’s pipeline of opportunities grew by $1.1 billion in the last twelve months and stands at $1.7 billion today.
“This transaction fully funds our growth plans and accelerates our vision of providing our customers with a ‘first-to-know’ advantage. This is an important inflection point for our industry as commercial and government users demand access to real time information about the changes that matter most to them,” said Brian O’Toole, CEO of BlackSky. “With our high revisit rate constellation and our sophisticated analytics platform, BlackSky can address the market’s significant demand for real-time geospatial intelligence. We’re excited to partner with Osprey to accelerate our mission to support our customers’ critical needs.”
“We are delighted to partner with BlackSky, a first mover in a large and exciting new market,” said David DiDomenico, a Partner of JANA Partners LLC who also serves as CEO of Osprey. “The new space economy is taking off, and we believe that BlackSky’s low-cost image capture and on-demand delivery of analytics will revolutionize the way companies and governments detect and track change. BlackSky’s continuously growing, proprietary database is a valuable competitive advantage, and we believe its vertically integrated operations serve as a major point of distinction among other space analytics companies. This transaction will bring to fruition the vision of Brian and the BlackSky team.”
Jonathan Z. Cohen, Executive Chairman of Osprey, added “We are thrilled to join forces with Brian and the BlackSky team, and many of the pre-eminent investors in the new space economy. We look forward to working together to build long term value for BlackSky shareholders.”
Read the full press release here.
About BlackSky Holdings, Inc.
BlackSky is a leading provider of real-time geospatial intelligence. BlackSky monitors activities and facilities worldwide by harnessing the world’s emerging sensor networks and leveraging its own satellite constellation. BlackSky processes millions of observations from space, air, environmental sensors, asset tracking sensors, Industrial IoT, and Internet-enabled narrative sources. BlackSky’s on-demand constellation of satellites can image a location multiple times throughout the day. BlackSky monitors for pattern-of-life anomalies to produce alerts and enhance situational awareness. BlackSky’s monitoring service is powered by cutting-edge compute techniques including machine learning, artificial intelligence, computer vision, and natural language processing. BlackSky’s global monitoring is available via a simple subscription and requires no IT infrastructure or setup. For more information visit www.blacksky.com.
About Osprey Technology Acquisition Corp.
Osprey is a special purpose acquisition corp., or SPAC, that was established as a collaboration between investment firms HEPCO Capital Management, led by Jonathan and Edward Cohen, and JANA Partners, led by Barry Rosenstein and with its SPAC initiative led by JANA Partner David DiDomenico, who serves as Osprey’s CEO, President, and Director. Osprey was formed to consummate a transaction with one or more transformative companies that have developed innovative software delivery platforms. For more information visit www.osprey-technology.com.
About Union Square Advisors
Union Square Advisors is a leading technology-focused investment bank that offers strategic mergers & acquisitions advice and execution, agented private capital financing, and debt capital markets advisory services. Founded in 2007, with offices in San Francisco and New York, Union Square Advisors works with leading public and private technology companies, private equity, venture capital, and family offices across the technology landscape with a primary focus on Software, Software-Enabled Services, IT Infrastructure and Internet/Digital Media/Marketing Technology. Since inception, Union Square Advisors has advised on 130 transactions, valued in excess of $105 billion. For more information, please visit http://www.usadvisors.com.
