Leaf Space raises €20m series B to expand ground station network

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 new frequencies for remote sensing satellites.

“It further validates our success and market position as the second largest Ground Segment-as-a-Service (GSaaS) operator in the world,” said Jonata Puglia, Leaf Space CEO and co-founder.

The round was subscribed by lead investors CDP Venture Capital Sgr and Neva Sgr, alongside SIMEST and the Digital Transition Fund, part of the CDP S.p.A. group. Existing shareholders RedSeed Ventures, Primo Space, and Whysol Investments, all contributed to the new funding round.

As mentioned, the EIB has committed an additional €15 million in Venture Debt to the Company, with that transaction being in its final stages.

“Within the next 10 years, we want to empower a future where spacecraft – regardless of their mission, application, orbit or deep space destination – are seamlessly serviceable and integrated to a plug-and-play (PnP) connectivity service,” said Giovanni Pandolfi Bortoletto, CSO & co-founder.

“We are progressing towards efficient, fully automated, and ubiquitous communications with satellites, which will facilitate the ongoing and sustainable expansion of the space ecosystem. In this context, Leaf Space facilitates such communications with space infrastructures through its automatic scheduler – the proprietary algorithm on which Network Cloud Engine and a distributed antenna network are based – and lays the foundation for new ones not possible yet today”.

Leaf Space

Launched in 2014 and based in Lomazzo near Milan, Leaf currently supports 80 satellites and highlights that, first time, this March it achieved 10,000 successful satellite passes during a single month.

In November 2021, we reported on Fleet Space, the IoT nanosatellite specialists, and its Australian Red Banks Ground Station in Pinkerton Plains, which was built in collaboration with Leaf Space.

See also: KSAT expands its global ground network