Finance

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 ...

Quindar, the maker of a platform to monitor and automate satellite operations, has closed an oversubscribed $6 million seed extension round.   The funding was led by Fuse with continuing investment from Y-Combinator and Funders Club. “This infusion of funding will propel our mission to manage satellites as efficiently as servers by utilizing AI-driven insights and operations to revolutionize the ...

Tilbury based electric delivery lorry maker Tevva plans to merge with Arizona contract EV manufacturer ElectraMeccanica. “Tevva recently commenced deliveries of its 7.5 tonne battery-electric truck to commercial fleet customers focused on urban delivery – a critical and high-growth segment of the overall commercial truck market for delivery-dependent urban areas,” explained the companies in a statement. “Tevva’s existing 110,000sq-foot EV ...

Leaf Space has raised capital for a total of €20 million ($22 million) on top of a loan by the European Investment Bank (EIB) for a further €15 million through Venture Debt. The company, which specialises in ground segment services for satellite operators, said the funding would help it expand its global network of ground stations, and would help support ...

Samsung has upgraded its SmartSSD which processes data directly, thereby minimising data transfers between the CPU, GPU and RAM. The SmartSSD uses Xilinx Versal Adaptive SoCs to integrate the storage and processing functions in data centres. This technology can avoid the bottlenecks when moving data between storage devices and CPUs,  improving system performance and energy efficiency. . Leveraging software and ...

Anglia Components has broken ranks with other distributors targeting the UK’s start-ups and entrepreneurs and has launched a dedicated division, Anglia Unicorn, to put academic start-ups in touch with financial seeders and both in touch with skilled engineers who can make the vision a reality. Named after the mythical creature which eludes capture, a Unicorn company is a start-up that ...