ReOrbit lands record funding to take on Musk’s Starlink from Europe

ReOrbit, a Finnish startup focused on helping nations control their own sovereign satellites, has raised a record €45 million (about US $53 million) Series A round of funding for a European space tech company. The funding round signals that Europe’s new space market is heating up, fueled by a geopolitical environment in which countries increasingly worry about relying on foreign technology for critical infrastructure.

Founded in 2019 and based in Helsinki, ReOrbit provides both the hardware and software needed for independent satellite operations. According to its CEO, Sethu Saveda Suvanam, the company offers a solution to nations that can’t build their own satellites but want an affordable alternative to Elon Musk-owned Starlink. 

Unlike Starlink, which also targets private users and enterprises, ReOrbit wants its clients to have full ownership and sovereignty over their satellites and communications. This means sourcing hardware from trusted sources and controlling it with ReOrbit’s software layer.

This software core, which Saveda Suvanam likens to Apple’s iOS, can operate both ReOrbit’s geostationary orbit satellite SiltaSat, which stays fixed above one point on Earth, and its low earth orbit satellite that circles closer to Earth, UkkoSat.

Such flexibility is particularly critical for countries that recognize the accelerating role of space technology underpinning their defense, security, and critical infrastructure.

That approach has helped the company sign “a full contract worth some hundreds of millions” with one nation and “multiple MOUs” with others, Saveda Suvanam said.

Saveda Suvanam insists that such contracts mean the startup didn’t need external funding, but it took the round anyway to accelerate growth. He wants ReOrbit to become a sales unicorn in the next four years. “We are targeting €1 billion in order books,” Saveda Suvanam said.

ReOrbit was actually aiming to raise €50 million in its Series A round organized by Springvest, a Finnish firm that organizes crowdsourced public offerings to qualified investors for private companies. While the startup didn’t reach the full target, the round was record-sized for Finland, which contributed to the round in several ways.

“The public share issue of €8 million, organized for Finnish private investors and family offices, was opened on June 16 and filled in just 4.5 hours — faster than any share issue ever arranged by Springvest,” Saveda Suvanam wrote to TechCrunch. That converts to about $9.4 million.

The remaining €37 million ($43.5 million) also had a strong Nordic flavor, coming from institutional investors including previous backers Varma, Elo, Icebreaker.vc, Expansion VC, 10x Founders, and Inventure.

With competitors including Astranis and others, ReOrbit is shaped by the location it chose. Saveda Suvanam was born in India, but had spent 15 years in Sweden’s space industry before deciding to relocate his newly created company to Finland and move there with his wife, Mina Rajabi, who is also ReOrbit’s chief of staff.

One key factor was a regulatory environment that had already proven favorable to Finland’s ICEYE, which has been one of the most well-capitalized space startups outside of SpaceX. But the current tense geopolitics also play a role. Recent cuts to undersea cables in the Red Sea served as a reminder to other nations of the importance of satellite communications and imaging.

“Finland is not a country that wants to be a superpower, and this is very important, because today, a lot of nations are stuck between China and the U.S. When we talk to the highest authorities of these nations, they always say, ‘We are looking at Europe and the Nordics very keenly, because this is a time where we want to find neutral partners.’ This is why it’s so exciting to [come from the Nordics] if you’re in this space — no pun intended.”

ReOrbit’s next milestone will also come from Europe: the company is building a satellite for an in-orbit demonstration with the European Space Agency that it plans to launch in the second quarter of next year, Saveda Suvanam said.