Finance

Orbex, a UK spaceflight company, has raises £16.7m investment from six backers in an update to its Series C funding round. The funding will help Orbex ramp up the development of Prime, its 19-metre long, two-stage rocket for transporting small satellites into Low Earth Orbit, says the Forres-based company. The aim is to ensure full readiness for its launch period, ...

Kuva Space, a Finnish Earth Observation company, has been awarded a €1.8 million contract to be part of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Civil Security from Space (CSS) programme. This will be to provide advanced hyperspectral situational awareness information, for monitoring and helping to manage civil security and crisis events. As part of a three-year R&D programme, the company will  ...

The UK Space Agency is further funding eleven space projects involving UK work with international partners on innovative technology. The agency’s International Bilateral Fund is being used for Phase 2 backing of a range of companies and organisations – from the Alan Turing Institute using Artificial Intelligence to improve space operations to XCAM working on an X-ray imaging instrument to ...

The UK Space Agency, in collaboration with the UK Innovation and Science Seed Fund (UKI2S), has announced an initiative – dubbed the Space Portfolio – to support early-stage space startups. An investment fund backed by the government, it will be providing seed funding to science and technology start-ups and SMEs. In total £8 million will be allocated. Investments will typically ...

A new report is highlighting opportunities for UK quantum computing companies in Japan. The country is investing to accelerate the development of commercial applications in fields such as chemistry, financial services and logistics optimisation, highlights Intralink, a business development consultancy. The report has been prepared by as part of the UK-APAC Tech Growth Programme, which the company is delivering for ...

The UK Government has launched the first funding call for its C-LEO programme – to help boost the country’s satellite communications sector – which was announced in the recent Spring Budget. There is £60 million of funding being made available over the next four years for satellite constellation-related ideas. Awards of up to £20 million per project will be funded ...

Simera Sense, an optical payload specialist for small satellites, has raised €13.5 million in its first funding round. The funding will be used to further develop its camera product range, increase its production capacity, and accelerate its on-board processing capabilities, said the company. Additional production sites were also being planned in Europe. Specifically, it will fast-track the development of higher-resolution ...

Saudi Arabia plans to invest in AI with an investment plan estimated to be around $40bn, according to a report in the New York Times. The announcement was made in the same week as Nvidia held its developer conference in San Jose, California, which it billed as a conference “for the era of AI”. This one of the world’s most ...

Space South Central is the portal to Cosmic Capital for space-related SMEs to attract financial backing. The regional space organisation – taking in Surrey and Hampshire – and the SETsquared Partnership have won UK Space Agency funding to run the free initiative, which is called Cosmic Capital. It aims to help “high-potential space and space-related SMEs attract investment” and applications ...

The UK Space agency is funding a comms tech competition with a potential of £10 million investment open to a range of “innovative products or components, systems or services, and any aspect of the space, ground or network segments”. This could, for example, include technologies such as the laser communication in space, or the use of space tech to improve ...