Toulouse-based U-Space, a provider of turnkey solutions for satellite constellation operators, has raised €7 million from Karot Capital, the French Ministry of Defence’s Definvest fund managed by Bpifrance, with the support of the French defense procurement agency (DGA) and BNP Paribas Développement. To date, this deal is one of the largest seed capital raisings for a French NewSpace player.
Founded in 2018 by 3 aerospace engineers (Fabien Apper, Nicolas Humeau and Antoine Ressouche), and based in Toulouse, the cradle of the French space industry, U-Space designs and builds complete space systems weighing from 4 to 50 kg, and has established itself in the highly technological market for the commercialization of space solutions with a unique value proposition in the nanosatellite range.
With the arrival of new players offering ever cheaper launches (thanks in particular to reusable (micro) launchers), operators can now send their satellites at lower cost. But the satellite itself has to be affordable for satellite constellations. Thanks to U-Space’s solutions, which offer low cost, small size, replicability (robustness) and performance, this is now possible.
In 2022, the relevance of these solutions led to a sharp acceleration in U-Space’s construction projects (N3SS, Synchrocube, CREME), and it is to support this development that the company has called on new investors. The funds raised will enable investment in R&D, optimization of the design process, industrialization of production and production of specific constellations, and of course the recruitment needed to cope with this increase in activity.
“We would like to thank the teams at Karot Capital, Bpifrance, the French Ministry of the Armed Forces and BNP Paribas Développement for the confidence they have shown in us, as well as the Occitanie Region, the Defense Innovation Agency and Airbus Développement, who have supported us in this decisive and structuring process. We would also like to thank the Centre National des Etudes Spatiales for the technical legacy it has passed on to us, and for the support it has given U-Space since its creation”, says Fabien Apper, CEO and co-founder of U-Space.
For Sébastien Lecornu, Minister of the Armed Forces: “The Ministry of the Armed Forces is delighted with the Definvest fund’s participation in the development of U-Space, a promising NewSpace company with which it is already working on a number of subjects. With this new investment, the Ministry is making a direct contribution to U-Space’s change of scale, turning it into an industrial company capable of producing competitive nanosatellites that break with current systems. Definvest was designed with this in mind, and with this fourteenth investment it is proving more than ever an indispensable and complementary tool in the Ministry of the Armed Forces’ Action PME plan.”