Europe spent two years talking about launch capacity. The money is now moving toward the satellites themselves.
Open Cosmos has banked €300M to add manufacturing capacity and widen its Earth observation, connectivity and real-time intelligence services.
ETF Partners, Lightrock, British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, Institut Catala de Finances and Entrepreneurs First joined the round. Convex, the National Security Strategic Investment Fund, and Phoenix Court, home of LocalGlobe and Latitude, also participated.
The Barcelona company designs and operates small satellites, then sells the data they produce, a model that depends on cheap launch and repeatable assembly.
Timing helps. European space funding has accelerated sharply: The Exploration Company raised €387M before winning ESA’s €760M ALADDIN cargo capsule contract, and defence buyers are shifting budgets toward orbital assets.
Open Cosmos positions itself as an end-to-end provider, pairing manufacturing with downstream analytics so governments and insurers can buy insight instead of hardware.
Why it matters: Europe is funding sovereign launch, observation and connectivity at once, and constellation operators with their own assembly lines capture the widest slice of that spending.
