Alphabet Inc.’s Loon LLC unit announced on Wednesday night that it has raised $125 million from SoftBank Group Corp. to support its plans for a stratospheric internet network.

The Japanese carrier is making the investment through HAPSMobile, an aerospace venture in which it owns a 90 percent stake. SoftBank launched the group in 2017 as a collaboration with a California firm called AeroVironment Inc. that’s most notable for its cutting-edge drone designs.

Loon and HAPSMobile operate in the same area. They’re trying to send telecommunications equipment up to the stratosphere in order to bring internet access to underserved parts of the world, particularly regions where it’s unfeasible to build a ground-based carrier network. Loon hopes to realize this vision with internet balloons (pictured) while HAPSMobile is building a large, solar-powered drone dubbed the Hawk 30 that can carry cellular antennas.

The $125 million funding round is intended to lay the groundwork for a long-term partnership between the groups. Loon will receive the right to invest the same sum in HAPSMobile and the two are holding talks about further collaboration, most notably around technology development.

The groups are exploring the possibility of building shared ground station infrastructure that would be compatible with both Loon balloons and the Hawk 30 drone. Another item under consideration is a common airborne communications module for their vehicles, which could allow the groups’ stratospheric networks to connect to each other. 

SoftBank indicated that the partnership may also see the subsidiaries collaborate on the business front. They’re weighing an “alliance to promote the use of high altitude communications solution with regulators and officials worldwide,” the Japanese carrier said. 

Loon has already starting making inroads into the global telecommunications market. Last year, it inked a deal with a Kenyan carrier to provide connectivity for people in rural and remote parts of the country. More recently, the Alphabet subsidiary licensed the software powering its internet balloons to Telesat Inc., a Canadian satellite operator.

Loon’s new funding round is not the first example of Alphabet bringing in outside investors to support a subsidiary. Verily, the search giant’s life sciences group, raised a massive $1 billion in January to fuel its research efforts. Similar moves have been made recently by other companies, most notably Uber Technologies Inc., which this month sold a stake in its autonomous driving business to a SoftBank-backed consortium.

Photo: Loon