SWISSto12 has announced securing a $28m working capital facility from UBS Switzerland AG, the multinational universal bank. The facility will provide SWISSto12 with flexible growth capital to meet strong customer demand for its geostationary SmallSat, HummingSat.
Since the company was founded in 2011, SWISSto12 has raised over €50m in venture capital from prominent Swiss and European investors including Constantia New Business (CNB Capital), Swisscom Ventures, Swisscanto and Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB). In addition to its growing Radio Frequency product and subsystem business, SWISSto12’s partnership project with the European Space Agency (ESA) has secured over €30m of support to design the HummingSat platform – the first SmallSat for geostationary orbit.
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 (acq. Viasat 2023). The company currently has more than €200m in back orders from customers across its Radio Frequency products and subsystems business, partnership with ESA and recent HummingSat contracts.
Pär Lange, Partner, Swisscom Ventures said: “SWISSto12 is the first ever growth-stage company to sell a whole geostationary satellite to global satellite operators – a testament to the uniquely transformative market potential of the HummingSat platform and the team’s technical and commercial acumen. Having generated over €20m 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.”
Peter Gisler, CEO of SERV, added: “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.”
Emile de Rijk, Founder and CEO of SWISSto12 stated: “This $28m working capital facility with UBS gives us additional agility to execute the manufacturing and delivery of our first HummingSats and address strong customer demand. With HummingSat, SWISSto12 is creating a new class of agile, high-performance SmallSat for a 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.”
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