Open Cosmos lands €31M from Catalonia to build sovereign satellite network
What's the deal? The Catalan government, through the Institut Català de Finances (ICF), has invested €31M in Open Cosmos, the Barcelona-based satellite company founded by Rafel Jordà. The bulk — €25M — came from the debut of a venture fund called Lidera Grans Empreses-Arrels, with an additional €6M from the Capital Expansió II fund.
The investment aims to cement Open Cosmos's presence in Barcelona and strengthen the city as a hub for the NewSpace ecosystem. The company had previously worked with the Catalan government on projects including the Menut nanosatellite.
Why now? Alongside the funding, Open Cosmos announced ConnectedCosmos — its own low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation designed to provide sovereign, secure communications to governments and institutions. The goal: reduce dependence on transcontinental mega-constellations.
The network uses optical inter-satellite links that route data directly between satellites, bypassing vulnerable ground infrastructure and undersea cables. This creates a private network resistant to interference and cyberattacks.
Each satellite will carry an integrated IoT payload, combining Earth observation with Internet of Things connectivity. Open Cosmos calls this "contextual intelligence" — when a ground-based IoT sensor triggers an alert, the system can immediately deliver the corresponding satellite image, whether the event is a wildfire, a critical infrastructure incident, or shifting maritime conditions.
What could go wrong? Open Cosmos is stepping into direct competition with Sateliot, another Catalan satellite company operating in the IoT connectivity space. The two had previously collaborated, but ConnectedCosmos's multi-layer data analytics approach puts them on a collision course. The market for sovereign satellite communications in Europe is heating up, and execution risk in building out a full LEO constellation is significant.
The signal: Open Cosmos, classified as a "breakout" stage company on Dealroom, is now backed directly by a public investment fund — an unusual funding profile that underscores how European governments are moving beyond grants and procurement contracts to take equity stakes in sovereign space infrastructure. The competitive dynamics in Catalonia alone are telling: Sateliot, already at "late growth" stage and focused on 5G IoT satellite connectivity, now faces a locally funded rival building an overlapping constellation, suggesting the region is betting on redundancy rather than consolidation in its NewSpace ambitions.
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