Swiss satellite maker SWISSto12 announced on January 21, 2026, that it has secured €73 million (US$84.8 million) in financial backing from the European Space Agency (ESA) through the HummingSat Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES) Partnership Project (which has received financial pledges from ESA members Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Sweden and Norway, as well as Associate Member Canada).
In the press release announcing this round of funding, the Swiss firm also disclosed that it had raised additional capital from private investors during the second half of 2025, bringing the total fresh investment secured past the €100 million (US$117 million) mark.
These funds will be employed mainly in support of the company’s industrial roll out plan.
Based in Renens, near the Swiss city of Lausanne, SWISSto12 manufactures small geo-stationary satellites, as well as lightweight radio-frequency systems using patented 3D technologies.
SWISSto12 has deliberately chose to avoid the increasingly competitive low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite market in order to develop a new generation of compact geostationary (GEO) satellites which are considerably smaller, lighter and cheaper than traditional alternatives.
HummingSat, the satellite which is at the center of the company’s recent ESA partnership, has a size of one cubic meter, or about the size of a domestic washing machine, and weighs around one ton, which is about a third of legacy GEO satellites.
Major satellite operators such as Intelsat and ViaSat have already ordered some of these satellites, the first launch of which is expected in 2027.
Because the HummingSat satellites are relatively cheap to build and launch, SWISSto12 expects that, in addition to supplementing the constellations of established GEO satellite operators, they will also draw some demand from new market entrants that might have otherwise opted for LEO technology.