Discover the cutting-edge launch systems, orbital infrastructure, and commercial space innovations expanding humanity's footprint and building the new space economy.
EnduroSat closed a $205 million round co-led by Riot Ventures and Atreides Management. The money buys a US manufacturing plant, a hub on a former Bulgarian airbase, and a wager that satellites can be built like drones.
Antwerp fabless spin-out Tusk IC closed a €15M Series A, led by Matterwave Ventures, FORWARD.one and the Flanders Future Tech Fund, to take its standard-CMOS Ka-band beamformer chips from prototype into volume production — a cheaper route to the flat-panel antennas satellite broadband depends on.
Telesat handed SatPort the build-out of its Lightspeed landing stations; Gilat agreed to buy Comtech's space unit for $157.5 million. Ground infrastructure has quietly become the space economy's bottleneck — and its newest consolidation play.
The EU's IRIS² secure-connectivity programme moved from plan to purchase order in September, with three primes taking the first €5 billion in awards. Its cost has risen from €6 billion to €15.6 billion, and first launches have slipped to 2029.
France and the UAE are underwriting a $1B constellation that interprets its own imagery in orbit. The technical case is clear; the commercial case is not.
Europe has funded its first serious return ticket from orbit. The Exploration Company's $450 million round, the largest Series C ever by a European space firm, backs a reusable capsule and an engine for a heavy-lift launcher Europe has not yet agreed to build.
Isar Aerospace's Spectrum reached orbit on September 5, 2026, making the Munich company the first commercial European launch provider. The engineering milestone is done; the investment case now rests on whether a factory built for 40 rockets a year can turn into a flight rate.
Stoke Space closed an initial $1 billion Series E on September 8, bringing total capital raised to $2.3 billion. Its fully reusable Nova Pathfinder is targeting early 2027 for a first orbital launch, with the larger Nova Block 2 scheduled for 2029.