Sift, a Marina del Rey-based unified observability platform for mission-critical hardware and physical systems, has raised $42M in Series B funding led by StepStone, with participation from GV, Riot Ventures, Fika Ventures, and Contrary Venture Capital. The platform ingests, stores, analyzes, and visualizes high-rate, high-cardinality telemetry data across hardware lifecycles from development to operations. The capital will expand engineering to double the team from 70 employees.
Space Force Modernization Fuels Telemetry Boom
The raise aligns with U.S. Space Force rethinking satellite ground station strategies, as announced March 2026. This shift impacts data handling for proliferating satellite constellations, where Sift's customers like K2 Space, Astranis, and Impulse Space operate. Meanwhile, Nominal has raised over $95M for hardware test stacks, and HighByte secured $19.5M for industrial data operations. Sift differentiates with sub-nanosecond precision for mission-critical telemetry in air-gapped environments.
Legacy Tools Fail Hardware Scale
Engineers at aerospace and defense firms rely on spreadsheets and custom scripts for telemetry analysis, leading to manual reviews that take weeks. Mission-critical machines generate terabytes of data daily at petabyte scale with zeptosecond precision. Current IT observability tools buckle under high-cardinality hardware streams, lacking hardware-specific CI/CD and compliance features.
Unified Platform Enables AI Analysis
Sift Infra provides scalable ingestion and storage, while Sift Explore offers real-time visualization of millions of data points per second. Sift Reports automates validation for CI/CD pipelines, and Sift Governance enforces security for ITAR-compliant, on-premises deployments. Unlike software-focused tools like SigNoz, Sift handles hardware fleets with integrations to NVIDIA and Palantir.
As Karthik Gollapudi, CEO and co-founder, noted:
"We started Sift because the infrastructure needed for AI-controlled hardware didn't exist."
Strategic Investors Validate Niche
StepStone's leadership signals growth capital for scaling enterprise sales in defense and space. GV's participation adds AI expertise, aligning with Sift's NVIDIA Inception membership for anomaly detection. Previous $17.5M Series A brought total funding to $67M, following seed backing.
Telemetry Market Scales with Fleets
The aerospace and defense telemetry market stands at $9.29B in 2026, projected to reach $12.05B by 2030 at 6.7% CAGR per Research and Markets. Broader observability hits $3.4B with 16% CAGR via Mordor Intelligence. Trends like AI anomaly detection and hardware DevOps drive capital into specialized platforms amid Space Force FY2026 procurement for space vehicles.
Ex-SpaceX Founders Solve Telemetry Gaps
Co-founders Karthik Gollapudi and Austin Spiegel bring direct experience from SpaceX. Gollapudi led Dragon Flight Software operations, including two missions. Spiegel built Starlink's telemetry database and manufacturing systems. Their team includes ex-SpaceX Head of Design and hires from Palantir and Anduril, enabling purpose-built solutions for spacecraft and autonomy.
Doubling Down on Engineering
Sift plans to double its 70-person team, focusing on engineering, product, and go-to-market roles. Recent moves include a 20,000 sq ft headquarters in Marina del Rey and the 2026 Winter Release with Family Data for anomaly detection. Customers like JetZero and Reliable Robotics will benefit from expanded air-gapped support and CI/CD automation.