Mountain View, United States
Founded in 2011 as a project within Google[x] (now X the Moonshot Factory), Loon was an initiative to expand connectivity to hard-to-cover areas around the world using a network of stratospheric internet balloons. Loon pioneered technologies that spanned the fields of mechanical and software engineering, artificial intelligence, communications, meteorology and more. While in operation, Loon’s balloons traveled over 40 million kilometers and connected hundreds of thousands of people to the internet.
In 2021, Loon’s journey came to an end. The last investment in Loon was a $125.00M Funding Round investment at 25 April 2019 by HAPSMobile.
Despite the closure of Loon, the technology and expertise developed during its operation may have a lasting impact on the future of connectivity, particularly in remote and underserved areas.
