Catalonia's space ecosystem is taking another giant leap forward. Open Cosmos, the space company founded in Barcelona in 2015 by Rafel Jordà, has raised €300 million in one of the largest funding rounds of recent years for a company to emerge from Barcelona's tech ecosystem. Although the company's current corporate headquarters are actually in the UK, Barcelona remains one of Open Cosmos's main industrial hubs, home to a large plant where it develops, manufactures and integrates satellites. The scale of the round therefore not only gives the company the muscle to expand its manufacturing capacity and grow internationally; it also reinforces the role of space as one of the emerging sectors of the Catalan economy.
For decades, space activity was dominated by governments, large agencies and scientific missions. In recent years, however, satellites have stopped being merely tools for exploring space and have become key economic infrastructure. Satellites are now essential to the running of many economic activities: their networks enable communications, navigation and Earth observation, and provide data used by companies and administrations to make decisions in strategic sectors such as agriculture, energy, defence and emergency management.
It is in this new context that Open Cosmos wants to go a step beyond satellite manufacturing. With four production plants in Europe — in Barcelona, the UK, Portugal and Greece — the company already has the capacity to build up to one satellite a day. It now wants to use this capacity to build and put into orbit large groups of satellites, known as constellations, and from there offer Earth observation, connectivity and communications services.
To make this possible, the company needs to scale up, and the new capital injection will allow it to expand manufacturing capacity and accelerate the development of new constellations. According to its founder and CEO, Mallorca-born Rafel Jordà, this expansion also answers a broader need. "Europe needs to strengthen its technological and space sovereignty, and Spain must play a leading role in that challenge," he said, adding that the investment will help establish Spain as "one of the continent's main hubs for space innovation and manufacturing."
The scale of the round is evident not only in the €300 million raised — making it one of the great mega-rounds of the Catalan ecosystem in recent years — but also in the investors who have come on board. The deal has attracted European and international capital, with participation from firms such as Lightrock and ETF Partners, two major international pension funds, and the Institut Català de Finances (ICF). Other investors joining include A&G Global Investors, Santander Alternative Investments, Trill Impact, Phoenix Court — home to LocalGlobe and Latitude — and the National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF), among others.
The mix of financial investors, public capital and funds specialising in technology and infrastructure hints at just how large the Open Cosmos business has grown: this is no longer simply about financing the development of a space company, but about putting capital behind infrastructure that aims to play a significant role in Europe's new space economy.
Observing, connecting and turning data from space into information on the ground
To understand what Open Cosmos actually does, beyond building satellites, it helps to understand what happens once they reach space. The company's model combines three elements: observing the Earth, transmitting the information the satellites gather, and turning that data into information that is useful for decision-making.
This is the logic behind OpenConstellation, the company's network of Earth-observation satellites. The aim is to have several satellites working together to capture images and data of the planet more frequently and quickly. Some of this information can also be processed directly in orbit, so there is no need to wait for all the data to reach the ground before analysis can begin.
For this information to be genuinely useful, though, it needs to be transmittable. That is where ConnectedCosmos comes in: the company's communications infrastructure, designed to connect satellites with the ground and ensure secure, resilient communications. The system matters most in areas where ground-based networks do not reach, or in situations where such infrastructure may be knocked out.
The company's third piece is DataCosmos, which aims to put all this information to use. Rather than simply offering images captured from space, the company wants to analyse them and turn them into indicators that show what is happening on the ground. One example is detecting a possible wildfire: a satellite can identify an anomalous rise in temperature, process that information and send an alert to emergency services.
This three-part model already has a commercial track record. According to the company, Open Cosmos has signed new contracts worth some €320 million over the past three and a half years. The new capital injection is meant to scale up this model: building more satellites, deploying new constellations and expanding connectivity and data-processing capabilities.
The challenge of growing the Catalan space industry
Open Cosmos's growth has come alongside the consolidation of a Catalan space ecosystem that has been gaining size in recent years. A business fabric has been built up around space that includes satellite design and manufacturing, communications, sensors, Earth observation and data processing. Catalonia is now home to 83 companies specialising in space technologies — more than three times as many as in 2019 — with combined revenues of €237 million.
The challenge for these companies now, however, is to make the jump in scale: to grow, increase their industrial capacity and reach sufficient size to compete on the international market, dominated by powers like the United States and China. Open Cosmos is one of the companies trying to make that jump and gain weight in this new space industry. Founded in Barcelona in 2015, the company maintains a significant industrial presence in the city and helps strengthen the Catalan space ecosystem.
The company, for instance, built and put into orbit Menut, the Generalitat's first nanosatellite, and is currently involved in projects such as 6GStarLab, developed together with i2CAT to research the integration of satellite communications with future 5G and 6G networks. Its activity, however, already extends beyond Catalonia. Open Cosmos leads the Spanish Atlantic Constellation, an Earth-observation project that will deploy a network of satellites to gather data for use in areas such as agriculture, environmental management and emergency response.