SWISSto12, a Lausanne-based aerospace firm and producer of satellite tv for pc methods and radio frequency (RF) merchandise, as we speak introduced that it has secured €73 million ($84.8 million) in monetary assist from European Area Company (ESA) member states by means of the HummingSat ARTES partnership challenge.
The recent capital can be used to speed up the event and industrialisation of HummingSat, its “small but highly effective” geostationary telecommunications satellite tv for pc developed in collaboration with the European Area Company (ESA) by means of its public-private-partnership programme. It’s going to even be used for scaling up its manufacturing capability and boosting new product improvements.
The extra ESA funding, by means of the Superior Analysis in Telecommunications Methods (ARTES) HummingSat Partnership Challenge, inside ESA Connectivity and Safe Communications, was backed on the 2025 ministerial convention by pledges from member states Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, and affiliate member Canada.
Along with this, the corporate has additionally secured funding from European personal traders within the second half of 2025, bringing its whole funding raised to greater than €100 million.
Emile de Rijk, CEO and Founding father of SWISSto12, stated, “The latest subscriptions of Member States and Cooperating States on the ESA Ministerial Council to the HummingSat Challenge, and the most recent spherical of funding from European personal traders sends a robust message to the worldwide market that SWISSto12 is on the coronary heart of satellite tv for pc communications innovation.
“With our rising suite of agile, cost-effective and extremely performant SatCom options, we offer a reputable reply to a number of the most urgent challenges going through the house financial system, together with the important concern of enabling satellite tv for pc sovereignty – one thing, till now, out of attain for many of the world’s nations.”
Dr Emile de Rijk based SWISSto12 in 2011 as a derivative from his PhD on the Swiss Federal Institute of Expertise (EPFL) in Lausanne. In accordance with the corporate, its RF elements profit from patented 3D-printing applied sciences and related Radio Frequency (RF) product designs that ship light-weight, compact, extremely performing and aggressive RF performance.
Explaining the rationale behind its title, the corporate states on its web site: “Our title blends custom with know-how. ‘Swiss’ represents the custom of precision craftsmanship that Switzerland is famend for. ‘to12’ calls on the corporate’s first merchandise, which had been channelling indicators at Terahertz frequencies (1 THz = 1012Hz). Placing them collectively, we get SWISSto12, or ‘Swiss to the facility of twelve’.”
The corporate claims to be accelerating the transition of the worldwide satellite tv for pc communications trade, away from legacy massive, purpose-built, costly and slow-to-deploy options in direction of smaller, quicker, cheaper belongings that leverage software-defined, reconfigurable payload architectures and agile, multi-orbit capabilities.
SWISSto12 additionally plans to make use of the funding to additional develop its phased-array antenna applied sciences for use onboard LEO/MEO/GEO satellite tv for pc payloads and floor merchandise similar to person terminals. This can strengthen its capability to serve a broad set of buyer wants, for communications from and to geostationary and non-geostationary orbits.
HummingSat is scheduled for its first launch for SES in 2027. In accordance with the corporate, the HummingSat platform is considerably smaller and extra cost-efficient than legacy geostationary satellites, giving prospects a versatile, cost-effective platform to broaden transponder capability, allow community flexibility and reconfigurable software-defined payloads, deploy sovereign capabilities, and introduce new providers with agility.
