Open Cosmos raises €300 million to expand satellite manufacturing

what happened

UK-based satellite maker Open Cosmos raised €300 million ($349 million) led by Lightrock and ETF Partners, with Entrepreneurs First, the Institut Catala de Finances, the UK's National Security Strategic Investment Fund and more than a dozen other investors, per the company's Sept. 14 release, Payload and Tech.eu. The round is the largest in Open Cosmos's history, up from a $50 million Series B in 2023; the company says it will use the capital to expand its four European satellite-manufacturing sites and grow its ConnectedCosmos, OpenConstellation and DataCosmos service lines. Per Via Satellite, Open Cosmos says it can build one satellite a day across its four factories, holds Ka-band spectrum access, has accumulated more than $370 million in customer contracts since 2022, and is working to cut Earth-observation data delivery time from as long as 48 hours to as fast as 30 minutes. On October 5, Open Cosmos set a concrete target for ConnectedCosmos: 192 satellites, with more than 96 in orbit by the end of 2028 and full global coverage by 2030, operating under Liechtenstein Ka-band spectrum filings previously held by Rivada Space Networks; the first two demonstration satellites launched in January 2026, per Via Satellite.

why it matters

The nine-figure round gives Open Cosmos capital to scale manufacturing capacity as it competes for government and commercial satellite-manufacturing and data contracts against larger primes, and it is one of the largest single rounds raised by a European satellite builder this year, a signal of investor appetite for European space manufacturing independent of the US. UK Space Minister Baroness Lloyd called the round "a major vote of confidence in Open Cosmos and Britain's growing space sector," underscoring its backing from UK government investors alongside its industrial aims, per Via Satellite. The 192-satellite ConnectedCosmos target gives the European connectivity market a concrete, government-oriented rival timeline to Starlink, Eutelsat OneWeb and Amazon Leo.

signal-to-noise

quick facts

Companies

Open Cosmos

Category

financial

Impact

major

SNR

4 / 5

Event date

2026-09-14

Published

2026-09-14 13:37 UTC