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Europe is desperate to catch up in the space race.<\/p>\n
Even before SpaceX\u2019s gargantuan initial public offering in June, European leaders were worried that the continent\u2019s space sector was falling behind the United States in science and in funding. Another big worry: Europe had become too dependent on Elon Musk\u2019s rocket company to commercialize space.<\/p>\n
But in recent days, a string of deals has begun to shift the narrative. On Monday, Open Cosmos, a satellite maker with a headquarters in Britain, announced that it had raised 300 million euros (about $346 million) from mostly European backers.<\/p>\n
The investment comes after the Exploration Company\u2019s $450 million funding round \u2014 one of the European space industry\u2019s biggest ever. (The company, a European start-up, competes directly with Mr. Musk\u2019s SpaceX in the reusable rocket market.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Investors have put more than $16.5 billion globally into space tech start-ups so far this year, according to PitchBook, roughly on track to nearly double last year\u2019s haul. The pace of sector funding is growing even faster for European space-focused start-ups, PitchBook data shows.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Open Cosmos plans to use its new capital to expand its satellite manufacturing abilities and accelerate a push into satellite data services. The round was led by Lightrock, a London-based venture capital firm, and ETF Partners. Also participating were Institut Catal\u00e0 de Finances, a public development bank in Spain; Entrepreneurs First, a so-called start-up accelerator; and two international pension funds.<\/p>\n
Open Cosmos, an 11-year-old company, has now raised more than $390 million to date, the company said. That gives it a valuation of about $2 billion, according to two people with knowledge of the funding details who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the company\u2019s finances.<\/p>\n
Open Cosmos operates in an increasingly competitive part of the space sector. The company relies on SpaceX and other rocket-launch companies to get satellites into space. It also sells Earth-observation data to governments and businesses.<\/p>\n
In March, it announced that it would expand into orbital connectivity, or providing high-speed satellite broadband and internet-of-things connectivity to businesses and governments. That will put Open Cosmos more directly into competition with SpaceX.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The climate crisis has been a major business driver for Open Cosmos, Rafel Jorda Siquier, the company\u2019s founder and chief executive, said in an interview. Last year, the company booked approximately $175 million worth of contracts from governments and businesses. Many were paying for early alerts, delivered from Open Cosmos\u2019s low Earth orbit satellites, about how floods, wildfires and other weather calamities were ravaging the planet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are very acute situations where having information when it\u2019s needed and where it\u2019s needed becomes critical,\u201d he said. The company\u2019s satellite images of deadly floods in Valencia, Spain, in 2024 were quickly beamed to officials on the ground, as were data and images of wildfires in Greece last year, he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The company is aiming to speed delivery time of that earthbound data flow to minutes from hours, Mr. Jorda Siquier said. The new funding will help accelerate the build-out of satellites that can quickly process that data in space via artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
As speeds and processing abilities improve, Mr. Jorda Siquier said he had fielded more calls from insurers, agricultural companies and other businesses interested in his company\u2019s data services.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The big bottleneck, he concedes, is \u201claunch scarcity.\u201d Satellite makers are still highly reliant upon private companies like SpaceX, Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin and government-funded agencies to get their payloads into space. Any launch delays can throw off their satellite deployment deadlines by months. That said, Open Cosmos has been working with rocket-launch companies in India, Japan and the United States to secure enough slots on upcoming launches to get its satellites into space, he said.<\/p>\n
Still, the buzz around space as the next frontier for high-speed data connectivity and data processing has grabbed investors\u2019 attention. \u201cSpace is becoming a critical layer of infrastructure\u201d for companies and governments seeking high-speed data communications and, increasingly, data processing, Ashish Puri, a partner at Lightrock, said in an interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpaceX did open the doors to many new applications,\u201d Mr. Puri said. But, he added, a new wave of start-ups are now looking to capitalize.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n