Overview
- Univity, which announced the Series A on Thursday, said Bpifrance’s Deeptech 2030 fund joined Blast and Expansion, lifting total secured financing to about €68 million with a €31 million CNES contract.
- The funding pays for two 350‑kilogram UniShape test satellites that will trial a hybrid payload for broadband and direct‑to‑device links along with optical inter‑satellite links and routing, with missions planned from 2027 into early 2028.
- The company plans to start mass production in 2028 for an initial constellation of about 1,600 satellites that could scale to roughly 3,400 as it builds a factory near Toulouse and brings more manufacturing in‑house to cut costs.
- Operating in very low Earth orbit below roughly 375 kilometers is meant to cut signal delay and allow smaller, cheaper antennas on the ground, and Univity says an aerodynamic design aims for about seven years of on‑orbit life.
- Unlike consumer services such as Starlink or Amazon’s Kuiper, Univity sells to telecom operators and reports 16 agreements across four continents, a model that could extend mobile coverage to remote users through standard phones.