Swissto12 has secured a 26.15 million euros working capital facility from UBS Switzerland AG. The bank will provide Swissto12 with access to additional working capital to support the delivery of the company’s first HummingSat, Swissto12’s GEO smallsat.
Since the company was founded in 2011, Swissto12 has raised more than 50 million euros in venture capital from prominent Swiss and European investors that have included Contantia New Business, Swisscom, Swisscanto and Zürcher Kantonal. In addition to the company’s growing Radio Frequency (RF) product and subsystem business, Swissto12’s partnership project with the European Space Agency (ESA) has gained more than 30 million euros of support to design the HummingSat platform, the first smallsat for GEO.
In 2022, Swissto12 announced securing a deal to supply a HummingSat satellite to Intelsat, followed in May 2023 by a deal to supply three HummingSats to Inmarsat (acquired by Viasat in 2023). The company currently has more than 200 million euros in back orders from customers across the firm’s RF products and subsystems business, partnership with ESA and recent HummingSat contracts.
“Swissto12 is the first ever growth-stage company to sell a whole geostationary satellite to global satellite operators – testament to the uniquely transformative market potential of the HummingSat platform and the team’s technical and commercial acumen. Having generated over €200 million in customer orders, Swissto12 is also one of the few growth-stage companies able to secure a growth facility of this magnitude from a multinational bank such as UBS – the company is in a tremendously good position to reinvigorate the geostationary communications market on which billions of people depend for broadband, broadcast and safety services.” — Pär Lange, Partner, Swisscom Ventures
“As the Swiss Export Risk Insurance SERV, we are pleased to help enable this partnership between Swissto12 and UBS and support Swissto12 as it seizes new growth opportunities in the global satellite market.” — Peter Gisler, CEO, SERV
“This working capital facility with UBS gives us additional agility to execute on the manufacturing and delivery of our first HummingSat. Swissto12 is thereby creating a new class of agile, high performance SmallSat for geostationary orbit that is approximately three to five times smaller and lower cost than conventional geostationary satellites, while still reliably delivering critical services. We’re excited to build on customer demand from global satellite operators and national governments with our innovative geostationary communications satellites that will better connect and protect users worldwide.” — Emile de Rijk, Founder and CEO of Swissto12
