SpaceTech startup ecosystem
Europe's space ecosystem is expanding rapidly, with startups building small satellites, launch vehicles, earth observation platforms, and in-orbit services. Munich, Toulouse, and the UK are primary clusters, supported by ESA partnerships. We track 35 organisations in this sector across 6+ countries.
Showing 1–20 of 35 SpaceTech
Countries in this sector
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SpaceTech results
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10xDNA
10xDNA is a Munich-based deep-tech venture capital firm founded by serial entrepreneur and Die Hoehle der Loewen judge Frank Thelen. The fund focuses on disruptive technologies across artificial intelligence, quantum computing, space technology, synthetic biology, and energy. It targets companies whose technology has the potential to scale by an order of magnitude versus incumbents, backed by Frank Thelen's three decades of operating experience across consumer software, mobile, and deep tech.
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Amena Ventures
Amena Ventures is a Dublin-based early-stage venture and venture-partner firm incorporated in 2021, co-led by Managing Directors José Sousa and Sukhdev Hansra, whose backgrounds span investment banking, corporate finance and business transformation across Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. It focuses on seed and pre-seed investments in hardware-intensive sectors — robotics, autonomous systems, IoT and space-tech connectivity — primarily across the EMEA region. Beyond capital, Amena positions itself as a hands-on operating partner, supporting founders on business development, fundraising, governance and talent. Its portfolio — concentrated in Portugal — includes Connect Robotics (autonomous drone delivery), Ethiack (AI-powered ethical hacking, €4M seed 2024), Xpectraltek (multispectral imaging) and Connected (NB-IoT satellite connectivity, acquired by Open Cosmos in 2025).
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Astrocast
Astrocast is a Lausanne-based satellite IoT company founded in 2017 by Fabien Jordan and Jonas Weiss as an EPFL spin-out and ESA BIC Switzerland resident. The company designs, builds, and operates a constellation of nanosatellites in low earth orbit that provide two-way data connectivity to IoT devices in the most remote locations on Earth — including maritime vessels, agricultural sensors, and remote infrastructure monitoring systems. Astrocast's network eliminates coverage gaps where terrestrial mobile networks cannot reach, enabling clients in agriculture, maritime, utilities, and environmental monitoring to track assets and collect data globally. The company has launched multiple satellites, maintains commercial operations, and is listed on Euronext Growth Oslo, making it one of Switzerland's few publicly traded space startups.
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Astrolight
Builds laser optical communication terminals (ATLAS series) for secure space-to-ground, space-to-space and ship-to-ship data links. Selected for NATO's DIANA accelerator and works with the Lithuanian navy.
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Astroteq.ai
Developing an AI-based multichannel earthquake forecasting system providing predictions at 14-day, 5-day, 3-day and 1-day horizons with magnitude and location estimates. Founded in 2019; completed ESA BIC Poland and raised over €640k.
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Commercialization Reactor
Commercialization Reactor is a deep-tech venture creation platform and accelerator established in 2009 in Riga, ranked among the most experienced science-commercialisation programmes in Europe. It pairs scientists and researchers with entrepreneurial co-founders to build deep-tech startups, and provides up to €50k in pre-seed investment through a six-month programme focused on market and customer development. In 2024 it launched ESA BIC Latvia as the national ESA incubation centre operator, and has supported over 40 portfolio ventures across biotech, cleantech, materials, and space.
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D-Orbit
D-Orbit is an Italian space infrastructure company focused on in-orbit transportation and services for satellites. Its best-known product line is built around orbital transfer and deployment: rather than leaving smaller satellite operators constrained by the primary mission of a launch vehicle, D-Orbit helps place payloads into more precise target orbits after launch. That changes the economics and flexibility of access to space for customers who need better control over deployment profiles. The company also reflects a broader trend in European deep tech, where success increasingly depends on integrating hardware, software, mission operations, and long sales cycles into a single commercial platform. D-Orbit therefore matters beyond aerospace alone. It shows that European startups can participate in the frontier infrastructure layer of the space economy instead of limiting themselves to downstream software or research projects. In this directory, D-Orbit helps extend coverage into spacetech and aerospace logistics, while also connecting naturally to the ecosystem's support organizations, accelerators, and cross-border industrial networks that often help hard-tech companies reach early validation and partnerships.
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Daniel Metzler
Daniel Metzler is Co-founder & CEO of the orbital-launch company Isar Aerospace. A founder in the German startup ecosystem, Daniel leads the orbital-launch company Isar Aerospace.
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EPFL
EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) is Switzerland's second federal technical university, situated on the shores of Lake Geneva. Ranked among Europe's top research universities, EPFL has become one of the continent's most prolific generators of deep-tech and life-sciences startups, producing over 400 spin-off companies since 2000. Notable alumni companies include Nexthink, SOPHiA GENETICS, Astrocast, and Distalmotion. EPFL Innovation Park, located adjacent to the main campus, houses hundreds of startups and bridges academic research with commercial application across quantum photonics, precision health, robotics, and digital finance. The park includes an ESA BIC Switzerland programme that incubates space-tech startups. For founders in the Lake Geneva region, EPFL provides a uniquely dense combination of technical research infrastructure, institutional support, venture-ready talent, and direct access to EPFL's technology transfer office.
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ESA BIC Latvia
ESA BIC Latvia is the official European Space Agency Business Incubation Centre for Latvia, operated by Commercialization Reactor, opened in November 2024 at Riga Technical University. Over five years the centre aims to support 12–18 startups with free financial assistance, two years of business coaching, technical training, access to ESA expertise and satellite data, and legal consultations. It is part of the pan-European ESA BIC network and focuses on space-tech applications and downstream services.
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European Deeptech Week 2026
Week-long deep-tech programming across Paris with major sessions at Station F and Bpifrance-linked venues, designed to connect science-based founders with industrial buyers and patient capital. Includes deep-tech summit programming across SpaceTech, quantum, robotics, and advanced manufacturing.
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European Space Forum 2026
The 6th edition of a Brussels policy-and-business forum at the intersection of the European space industry and EU institutions. Relevant for NewSpace founders navigating funding, regulation, and procurement.
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Fabien Jordan
Co-founder and CEO of Astrocast, the Lausanne-based satellite IoT company he co-founded in 2017 as an EPFL spin-out and ESA BIC Switzerland resident. Jordan led Astrocast from a nanosatellite concept to a publicly listed company on Euronext Growth Oslo, building a LEO constellation that provides two-way IoT connectivity to remote locations across agriculture, maritime, and infrastructure sectors.
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Hard2beat VC
Hard2beat is a Wrocław-based pre-seed and seed venture fund founded in 2024 by Maciej Zawadziński — a serial entrepreneur with three exits including Piwik PRO (sold to Kirk Kapital in 2023) — alongside Maciej Frankowicz and Konrad Trzyna, who previously ran Shape VC's BRIdge Alpha programme. The fund closed at 84M PLN (~€20M), with PFR Ventures providing 56.5M PLN under the FENG programme and 30 private investors contributing the rest. Hard2beat backs Polish deep-tech founders from pre-revenue to early revenue with 1–3M PLN initial cheques and follow-on up to 8M PLN, targeting teams with a genuine technical moat in cybersecurity, medtech, biotech, devtools, dual-use/defence, gamedev, robotics and spacetech — explicitly avoiding B2C and shallow AI. By mid-2026 it had made seven investments including the open-source cybersecurity platform Defguard, autonomous UAV startup DefendEye, Alzheimer's wearable developer Neuromedical, neuroprotection biotech Pikralida, Unreal Engine AI copilot Ludus AI, and devtools company Graftcode (€2.1M, led with DigitalOcean Ventures, 2026).
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Icebreaker.vc
Icebreaker.vc was founded in 2017 in Helsinki by Aleksi Partanen, Lasse Lehtinen, Riku Sepälä, and Teddie Wardi to address the pre-seed funding gap in Finland, Estonia, and Sweden. The firm targets idea-stage companies with tickets of €150,000–€1.5 million, with Fund III targeting €30 million. Portfolio standouts include Hoxhunt (raised $40M Series B), Aibidia ($28M Series B), and ReOrbit (€45M Series A). Icebreaker is known for its diversity focus, backing 3.5× more immigrant founders than the Finnish VC average.
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ICT Spring 2026
Luxembourg's largest tech conference held at the European Convention Center, attracting 5,000+ attendees from the fintech, space tech, and cybersecurity sectors. Strong institutional presence from EU bodies and Luxembourg's financial regulators. Features a startup pitch zone and investor meetings. Tickets from EUR 200.
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INSCIENCE Conference 2026
Ukraine's largest popular-science and deep-tech conference, with 50+ speakers from 15+ countries, held in person in Kyiv despite wartime conditions. Relevant for deep-tech and science-driven founders looking for research collaboration and talent.
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Iron Wolf Capital
Iron Wolf Capital is Vilnius-founded deep tech and AI fund established in 2018, with additional offices in London and Tallinn. Its second fund, closed at €100 million, is the largest seed-stage deep tech fund in Baltic history, targeting 25 early-stage companies across AI, photonics, robotics, and space innovation built by Baltic founders and diaspora globally. The team combines backgrounds from Deutsche Bank, YPlan, and early Lithuanian VC history; initial tickets run €0.5–2 million and the fund typically leads or co-leads rounds. Iron Wolf has backed over 20 startups covering sectors from agritech and pharma to defence-adjacent AI.
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Kongsberg Agenda 2026
An annual technology festival that takes over central Kongsberg with hundreds of free debates, exhibitions, and talks on technology and value creation, spanning space and defence tech.
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Maana Electric
A Luxembourg deep-tech startup founded in 2018 by a team with backgrounds in ESA space missions. Maana Electric builds the TerraBox, a mobile factory that produces solar panels from sand and electricity using in-situ resource utilisation (ISRU) technology. The company signed a multi-million-euro contract with the European Space Agency in 2021 and received first commercial orders worth €100 million in 2023. Its LunaBox variant is designed to manufacture solar panels and generate oxygen on the Moon.
