SWISSto12 gets €26m in expansion funding
September 18, 2023
By Chris Forrester
UBS Switzerland is injecting €26.15 million into fellow-Swiss business SWISSto12 for further development of its HummingSat satellite division.
The extra financing will provide SWISSto12 with flexible growth capital to meet strong customer demand for its geostationary SmallSat HummingSat.
SWISSto12 has won a major order for one of its geostationary HummingSat craft from Intelsat (for IS-45) and a contract from Inmarsat for three craft of its I-8 series of satellites.
Since the company was founded in 2011, SWISSto12 has raised over €50 million 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 €30 million of support to design the HummingSat platform – the first SmallSat for geostationary orbit.
The company currently has more than €200 million 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 – testament to the uniquely transformative market potential of the HummingSat platform and the team’s technical and commercial acumen. Having generated over €200 million 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.”
The name SWISSto12 has its origins in tradition and technology: ‘Swiss’– to represent a tradition of precision craftsmanship as the company originally started in business with a portfolio of Radio Frequency products which rely on extremely precise mechanical geometries. ‘to12’ – in connection with the company’s first products, which were channelling signals atTeraHertz frequencies (1 THz = 10<sup>12</sup>Hz). Hence SWISSto12, meaning ‘Swiss to the power of twelve’.