Every satellite in low Earth orbit needs ground contact time. As constellations scale from dozens to hundreds of spacecraft, operators cannot afford to build and staff antennas at every latitude. Leaf Space, an Italian ground segment company founded in 2014, operates a globally distributed network of stations that satellite operators rent on demand. The model is ground segment as a service, and Giovanni Pandolfi Bortoletto has spent 10 years building the technology behind it.
Pandolfi co-founded Leaf Space after studying aerospace engineering at Politecnico di Milano. As Chief Product Officer, he built the company’s proprietary technology stack: Leaf Line, a network of fully owned ground stations, and Leaf Key, a software platform that automates satellite contact scheduling, data routing, and station orchestration. The network spans 27 stations across multiple continents, with 18 additional stations planned by the end of 2026.
The expansion has been geographically deliberate. In August 2024, Leaf Space opened its own teleport in Punta Arenas, Chile, at 53 degrees south latitude, positioned to capture polar orbit passes that most mid-latitude networks miss. In October 2025, the company signed a partnership with Japan’s Infostellar to become Leaf Space’s exclusive representative in the Japanese market. In June 2024, Leaf Space integrated its GSaaS network with Sateliot’s communication stack ahead of a SpaceX Transporter-11 mission, and separately signed agreements with Sidus Space and Maritime Launch Services.
The company raised a €20 million Series B in 2023, bringing total funding to $32.7 million. That capital is funding a network build-out timed to a supply gap: every new LEO satellite needs ground contact windows, and the ground segment has not expanded at the same rate as orbital capacity.
At SmallSat Europe, where Leaf Space is a conference sponsor, Pandolfi joins the panel “The Hybrid Ground Segment: Orchestrating between Sovereign Networks and the Hyperscale Cloud,” alongside GH Partners Managing Partner Noel Rimalovski, COMSAT President and CEO Chris Faletra, ETL Chief Technology Officer Paul Gouws, RBC Signals President and CEO Ron Faith, and GomSpace CEO Carsten Drachmann. The session examines how software-defined ground stations and cloud virtualization allow operators to manage multi-orbit fleets without dedicated infrastructure at each site.
Forty-five ground stations by the end of 2026 is Pandolfi’s answer to an industry that spent years optimizing what goes up while underinvesting in what comes down.
