French companies in the emerging space ecosystem are experiencing a slow end of the year after about a decade of development. After major fundraising campaigns in the first quarter – such as the €85 million raised by Unseenlabs, a Brittany-based SME involved in maritime surveillance, and the €27 million raised by Latitude, a company based in Reims that is designing the Zéphyr microrocket – the number of transactions was more modest. This illustrates the leveling off of investment in the sector over the past two years.
On Monday, October 14, Constellation Technologies & Operations announced that it had raised €9.3 million. The start-up offers telecom operators satellite internet access to complement their terrestrial coverage where it is lacking. Charles Delfieux, a 45-year-old engineer, came up with the idea from his experience at the World Bank. As a program manager in charge of structuring people's access to basic services, he observed "how difficult it was to access the internet in certain regions."
Hence the 2022 launch of its start-up aimed at creating a constellation of 1,500 high-speed, low-latency satellites. It will be deployed in a very low orbit, 375 kilometers from the Earth in conjunction with 5G frequency bands. This future satellite network could be compared to the submarine cables that telecom operators use jointly. "It's a solution for them, especially at a time when internet provision from space risks being pre-empted by new entrants like Elon Musk's Starlink or Jeff Bezos' Kuiper, which have their own facilities," argued Delfieux. Not to mention Chinese players.
The funds raised will enable the 30-person start-up, based in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (just outside of Versailles) and Toulouse (south), to test equipment connectivity in orbit as early as 2025. The first two prototypes are set to launch at the end of 2026, with deployment planned between 2027 and 2029.
Another recent fundraiser was by Skynopy, which raised €3.1 million in June for its first year of operation. The company is niche, specializing in connectivity through ground installations – antennas that receive and process information transmitted by satellites. However, the lack of such infrastructure is a bottleneck in a space market where low-orbit satellite constellations are increasing. This slows down their deployment speed and performance.
The start-up thereby offers operators a simplified service for connecting their satellites by sharing its antenna network. "They won't need to buy equipment themselves, nor hire experts to know how to send signals," summed up Pierre Bertrand, the creator of this company based at Agoranov, a science and tech incubator based in Paris. "We want to be the Airbnb of ground antenna."
You have 40.66% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.