Why We Led Open Cosmos’s €300 Million Series C

By Patrick Sheehan, Managing Partner, ETF Partners

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. A little later on, in the early 1980s, I funded my PhD in electronics by working as a technical consultant to Marconi Space Systems on advanced antenna design. Space then was for national agencies and the few large contractors who worked for them. I moved on to work with startups instead.

Four decades later, space has become entrepreneurial. Three years ago, ETF Partners invested in Open Cosmos because we could see the tremendous potential that existed for the highly entrepreneurial team behind this business. Last month we led a further large investment into the company, of €300m. Open Cosmos now has the capacity to build a satellite a day, and I could not be more pleased to deepen our partnership with the team there.

Our case rests on two simple convictions. Firstly, the climate crisis we face today cannot be managed without data that only satellites can supply. Secondly, Europe needs sovereign capability in orbit, more than ever. Open Cosmos sits where those needs meet, and it has already built a profitable and rapidly growing business there.

Why we invested originally
We first invested in July 2023, committing £10 million to co-lead the company’s $50 million Series B. Open Cosmos had only raised $7 million in capital since its founding in 2015 and yet had grown organically to positive EBITDA while doubling revenue year on year. Capital efficiency of that order is rare in hardware and exceptional in space. It told us a great deal about the team, their resilience and their effectiveness, and so we were keen to support their ambitious plans for the future.

Our Series B investment gave Open Cosmos the balance sheet it needed to continue to expand very rapidly. Headcount has grown from around 70 to nearly 400 people. The company now manufactures from four sites across Europe and can produce a satellite a day. It has signed more than $370 million in customer contracts over these past three years, and each of the years has shown profitable growth.
Governments have taken note. For example, ESA selected Open Cosmos to build a €60 million, seven-satellite Earth observation constellation for Greece, and Spain’s space agency chose it to lead development of the Atlantic Constellation.

Where the advantage lies
Open Cosmos’s advantage rests on what it has already built. It holds filing rights to key Ka-band frequency spectrum, the scarce resource on which every satellite communications network depends, and it has already put its first ConnectedCosmos satellites into orbit.

Its commercial model is equally distinctive. Through OpenConstellation, governments and organisations share satellite infrastructure and the data it gathers, gaining sovereign capability without building a full system alone. Manufacturing wins the first contract, and the services built on top sustain the relationship.

Expanding into sovereign telecoms
The Series C also enables Open Cosmos to move decisively into telecommunications. Sovereign economies increasingly want secure communications from space that they control, and Open Cosmos intends to provide them through ConnectedCosmos, its broadband and IoT constellation.

Telecoms will also turbocharge the company’s Earth observation business. A network that can both observe and communicate will be able to deliver what it sees directly to the people who need it. For governments that already rely on Open Cosmos for observation, sovereign connectivity is a natural extension of the same relationship.

Protecting the orbit
We established ETF Partners in 2005 on the conviction that technological innovation is the only practical way to address climate change. Space is now central to that conviction, and our commitment extends beyond Open Cosmos. As constellations multiply, so does the risk to everything already in orbit. Satellites can only deliver climate data and secure communications if the orbits they occupy remain usable.

That is why, in 2025, we also led the fundraising for Look Up. Co-founded by the first commander of French Space Command, Look Up is building a radar network to track objects in orbit and reduce the growing risk of collision. A sustainable Earth depends on a sustainable orbit, and Europe should hold the instruments to secure both.

What lies ahead
The conditions for building world-leading space companies have now converged in Europe. Rafel Jorda Siquier and his team have shown the calibre of ambition needed to convert that potential into commercial results.

We believe Open Cosmos can become one of Europe’s defining infrastructure companies.