Leaf Space has completed its Series A financing round of 5 million euros, bringing its total funding to 10 million euros. A contribution of 2 million euros came from Primo Space, the investment fund of Primomiglio SGR focused on investments in highly innovative companies in the space industry.
The other 3 million euros of investment were between Whysol Investments, acting as lead investor, and RedSeed Ventures, an early-stage investor of the company that had already joined the equity round last spring. Leaf Space will use the funding to further develop its ground segment services for smallsat operators in the NewSpace economy and globally scale up its business.
During the first trimester of 2021, the company plans to grow its operational ground stations from eight to 11 by deploying and activating stations in Sri Lanka, Canada and Australia. At the end of 2021, the company expects to have a total of 15 operational ground stations for its multi-customer Leaf Line service.
In addition, the company will provide several other ground stations to its Swiss client Astrocast, using the dedicated Leaf Key ground segment service.
The ground segment services of Leaf Space currently support more than 15 customers, such as Astrocast, Pixxel, Virgin Orbit, D-Orbit and many others, around the world. They use Leaf Space’s services to expand and consolidate their business, together with other important institutional customers such as the European Space Agency (ESA), Telespazio-Leonardo and the Indian Space Agency (ISRO). The continuous collaboration with high profile customers such as the ones mentioned, having high performance requirements, enable Leaf Space to improve and maintain the service at peak levels while maintaining maximum efficiency.
Other developments in 2021 will include implementing services to further improve and simplify the operational use for customers and covering almost all of the protocols and communications schemes currently in use in the microsatellite market. This, in turn, will increase Leaf Space’s performance and capabilities to support future more complex mission.
Leaf Space’s ongoing network expansion aims to minimize latency of satellite data reception, managing to provide telemetry, tracking, and control (TT&C). It also plans to provide downlink services to satellites in SSO at least once per orbit.
Jonata Puglia, CEO and Co-Founder of Leaf Space, said, “This is a fantastic achievement for Leaf Space. In a short space of time, Leaf Space has become an industry name and a key player in the NewSpace economy. It has shown to be capable of providing excellent ground segment services to satellite operators, from launch and early orbit phase (LEOP) all the way to decommissioning, but also in supporting launch vehicle operators. Having concluded this successful investment round shows the relative resilience of the sector, despite the ongoing pandemic, and allows the company to continue with its strong and swift development plan. Of course, we expect to see future challenges in the space industry as well as extraordinary projects with our customers, collaborators and partners, and we are proud to have Primo Space and our other investors on-board, who believe in our ambitious plans.”
