SWISSto12 secures €73M ESA funding for HummingSat expansion
SWISSto12, a manufacturer of advanced satellite and RF systems headquartered in Renens, Switzerland, has secured €73 million in financial support from ESA member states through the HummingSat ARTES partnership project.
The funding is intended to support the development and industrialisation of HummingSat, scale up manufacturing capacity, and enable new product innovations. These initiatives address increasing global demand for cost-effective, agile and sovereign communications in both government and commercial sectors.
The investment will also allow SWISSto12 to further develop its phased-array antenna technologies to be used onboard satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), and Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO), as well as in ground-based products such as user terminals. This will strengthen its ability to serve a broad set of customer needs, for communications to and from both geostationary and non-geostationary orbits.
The additional ESA funding, through the Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES) HummingSat Partnership Project, within ESA Connectivity and Secure Communications, was backed at the 2025 ministerial conference by pledges from Member States Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, and Associate Member Canada.
Developed in partnership with ESA and scheduled for first launch in 2027, the HummingSat platform is reportedly smaller and more cost-efficient than legacy geostationary satellites, giving customers a flexible, cost-effective platform to expand transponder capacity, enable network flexibility and reconfigurable software-defined payloads, deploy sovereign capabilities and introduce new services with agility.
Laurent Jaffart, ESA Director of Connectivity and Secure Communications, said, “We are proud to continue our support of SWISSto12, particularly in creating cost-effective solutions for satellite systems that answer to the SatCom ecosystem’s ever-increasing demands. ESA is committed to elevating Europe’s future in space through our support of industry, and by accelerating next-generation satellite technologies.”
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Emile de Rijk, CEO and Founder of SWISSto12 shared, “The recent subscriptions of Member States and Cooperating States at the ESA Ministerial Council to the HummingSat Project, and the latest round of funding from European private investors sends a strong message to the global market that SWISSto12 is at the heart of satellite communications innovation. With our growing suite of agile, cost-effective and highly performant SatCom solutions, we provide a credible answer to some of the most pressing challenges facing the space economy, including the critical issue of enabling satellite sovereignty – something, until now, out of reach for most of the world’s nations.”
