Open Cosmos raises €300M to turn small satellites into sovereign infrastructure

Why it matters

Open Cosmos is using Europe's demand for sovereign communications to expand from satellite manufacturing into a vertically integrated orbital infrastructure provider. The €300 million round gives it capital to add manufacturing capacity, expand ConnectedCosmos and grow its Earth observation and data services.

Open Cosmos, founded and led by Rafel Jorda Siquier, has secured €300 million to expand satellite manufacturing and its Earth observation, communications and data services, Tech.eu reported on September 14th.

Lightrock participated in the financing, which was described as led by European investors. ETF Partners, British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, Institut Catala de Finances, Entrepreneurs First, Convex, the UK's National Security Strategic Investment Fund, Phoenix Court, home of LocalGlobe and Latitude, and Claret Capital Partners also participated.

The scale of the round marks a sharp change for a founder whose initial thesis emerged from a university balloon project. The European Space Agency's account of Open Cosmos' origin traces the company to a project involving a stratospheric balloon and remote camera. Jorda has described seeing Earth's curvature and atmosphere as evidence that useful space missions could be built with modest resources.

According to Open Cosmos' biography of Jorda, he studied aerospace engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, completed an MBA while working at Airbus Defence and Space, and later worked at space startup zero2infinity. He founded Open Cosmos in 2015. He was joined early by co-founders Jordi Barrera Ars, a small-satellite engineer, and Aleix Megias Homar, who had worked on Earth observation and lunar exploration programs at Airbus and the European Space Agency.

A university balloon project helped establish the thesis. Eleven years later, €300 million is arriving to industrialize it.

From satellite missions to an orbital stack

Open Cosmos' original pitch centered on making individual satellite missions faster and less expensive. Jorda is now building across four connected businesses.

OpenOrbit designs, manufactures and operates satellites. OpenConstellation pools spacecraft and Earth observation capacity among governments and other customers. DataCosmos processes imagery and sensor readings into operational information. Open Cosmos describes ConnectedCosmos as a low Earth orbit network for broadband and IoT communications between satellites, orbit and Earth.

The combined model gives Open Cosmos several ways to capture the value of a mission. Open Cosmos can manufacture the spacecraft, operate shared orbital infrastructure, carry the resulting data and sell the software used to interpret it. That is a broader undertaking than supplying satellite hardware or imagery alone, and it explains why the latest financing is several times larger than the $50 million Series B Open Cosmos announced in September 2023.

Open Cosmos says the financing will expand ConnectedCosmos, grow OpenConstellation and DataCosmos, increase manufacturing capacity and add engineering, manufacturing and software staff across the UK, Spain, Portugal and Greece. Tech.eu's September financing report puts headcount close to 400 and says four European factories can collectively manufacture one satellite per day. The figure represents stated capacity and does not disclose the current production rate.

The company has not disclosed a valuation or a breakdown between equity and debt.

Sovereignty has become a sales strategy

The investor list reflects the customer base Jorda is pursuing. It mixes venture firms with a pension manager, a Catalan public lender and the UK's national security investment fund. Open Cosmos is selling infrastructure to governments that want communications and Earth observation capacity under European control, and public institutions are helping finance the supplier.

ConnectedCosmos sits at the center of that effort. Governments can buy a spacecraft from Open Cosmos, share observation capacity through OpenConstellation, move information over ConnectedCosmos and process it through DataCosmos. Jorda is packaging capabilities that customers would otherwise assemble across several vendors and contracts.

An industry analysis by Altagrove raised execution risks around ITU deployment deadlines for Open Cosmos' Ka-band constellation, adding another hurdle before ConnectedCosmos can become a commercial network.

Separately, Open Cosmos says OpenConstellation 1.0 could reduce Earth observation data delivery times from as long as 48 hours to as little as 30 minutes through onboard processing and inter-satellite communications. The comparison remains a company performance target.

The factory is only the first test

The financing raises the execution burden. Open Cosmos must coordinate satellite manufacturing, spectrum milestones, launch availability, network operations and data software while serving existing government and commercial customers.

Each piece has a different operating rhythm. Hardware must be manufactured and tested before launch windows. Connectivity requires enough satellites in orbit to provide useful coverage. Earth observation depends on revisit rates and sensor quality. DataCosmos has to turn those inputs into decisions quickly enough for customers to pay for the service.

Jorda now has substantially more capital to pursue that plan. The outcome will depend on whether Open Cosmos can preserve the cost and speed advantages of its small-satellite origins while building infrastructure that governments treat like a strategic utility.