Stellaria, the Abu Dhabi-based geospatial-intelligence startup formerly known as Farmin, has closed an AED 25 million (US$6.8 million) seed round backed by angel investors, giving the young company a fresh runway to build out its Stella AI operating system for satellite imagery and hand its first international customers a working alternative to legacy analytics stacks.
An AED 420 million valuation for a UAE-built platform
The round values Stellaria at AED 420 million (US$114.4 million) and is backed by a group of unnamed angels drawn from the UAE innovation ecosystem, according to details released by the company on August 26. Founder and chief executive Dr. Ali AlHammadi said the raise “reflects the confidence our investors have placed in our technology and the team behind it,” adding that the capital will let Stellaria invest in engineering, hire specialised talent and “build scalable products that can compete internationally.”
What Stella does
Stellaria positions itself as an AI “operating system” for geospatial intelligence rather than another point analytics tool. The Stella platform folds together satellite-imagery super-resolution, automated target recognition, satellite-derived bathymetry, maritime and port intelligence and environmental monitoring so that customers in government, defence, ports and infrastructure can ask questions of raw pixels without stitching together three or four vendors. A companion model called Meruem handles cross-sensor enhancement across optical, SAR and hyperspectral data.
From Farmin to a national tech-export story
Stellaria was founded in 2023 as Farmin and rebranded as it broadened beyond precision agriculture into defence and maritime intelligence. It is an alumnus of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Innovation Fund’s Innovation Accelerator Programme, and its raise lands as the UAE tries to position itself as a hub for advanced space and AI companies. It follows a summer of geospatial and Earth-observation fundraising, including Muon Space’s $250M Series C and Starcloud’s $250M Series A extension for orbital AI, and continues a broader UAE push into sovereign AI infrastructure alongside recent regional data-centre deals.
Reporting based on coverage from Wamda, Dealroom and Stellaria.