With fewer than six million people, Finland has quietly built one of Europe’s most competitive space sectors — radar satellites, hyperspectral imaging, jam-proof navigation, and sovereign communications, all clustered around Helsinki and Espoo. Here’s what four of its leading companies are building.
ICEYE: the radar satellites reshaping defence
Founded by Polish-Finnish engineer Rafal Modrzewski, ICEYE operates the world’s largest constellation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites, capable of imaging Earth day or night, through cloud cover. Demand accelerated sharply after its all-weather imagery proved valuable during the war in Ukraine, and again when the US paused intelligence-sharing with Kyiv. ICEYE has since become the country’s biggest defence-contract winner, partnering with German firm Rheinmetall on a €1.7 billion deal to supply sovereign SAR capability to the German military.
The scale of that momentum became clear in June, when ICEYE closed a Series F round of €450 million, led by General Atlantic, that valued the company at more than €10 billion — roughly four times its valuation just six months earlier. Combined with a secondary share sale, the total transaction exceeded €1 billion, making it one of the largest private funding rounds in European space history. New backers included the Qatar Investment Authority, US growth investor TCV, and — notably — fellow Finnish company Nokia, which joined as a strategic investor. Existing shareholders Solidium, Tesi, Varma, Ilmarinen and Lifeline Ventures also participated.
The investor confidence tracks a growing order book: ICEYE says seven European governments have now procured sovereign satellite systems from it, including Poland, whose four-satellite POLSARIS constellation was delivered to its armed forces within twelve months of signing — one of the fastest sovereign space deployments on record. The company reported €250 million in 2025 revenue and currently manufactures around 50 satellites a year, a figure it aims to double to 100 by 2028, a production tempo more typical of consumer electronics than military-grade radar imaging.
ReOrbit: building satellites in downtown Helsinki
ReOrbit is taking a different bet: bigger, geostationary satellites rather than small constellations. Its 750–800kg communications satellite, Silta, is designed to give nations secure, sovereign data links without depending on foreign infrastructure, with contracts reportedly worth hundreds of millions of euros and a first launch planned for next year. The company recently partnered with Google Cloud to build a satellite network combining quantum key distribution, optical terminals, and edge processors. Fittingly, ReOrbit manufactures its satellites in a historic building that once housed Finland’s first Ford factory.
Founded in 2019 by Sethu Saveda Suvanam, who relocated the company from Sweden to Finland, ReOrbit closed a €45 million Series A in September 2025 — the largest all-equity Series A round in Finnish history — led by Springvest with backing from Varma, Elo, Icebreaker.vc and others. In March 2026 it converted that momentum into its first hardware contract: a €150 million deal with asset-financing firm SLI for two Silta-class satellites, the first delivery due in 2029. Beyond Silta, ReOrbit’s portfolio includes Ukko, an intelligence and surveillance system, and OrbitCloud, a project — backed by a €4.6 million Business Finland grant — to combine direct-to-device satellite connectivity with AI inference running entirely in orbit. The company, which employs roughly 80-90 people and plans to reach 200-250 by year’s end, is targeting €1 billion in sales within four years.
Kuva Space: watching Earth in hyperspectral detail
Espoo-based Kuva Space builds hyperspectral microsatellites that capture far more detail than standard imaging, useful for climate monitoring, food security, and defence. Its Hyperfield-1 satellite reached orbit via SpaceX in 2024, the start of a planned constellation. The company is now expanding into the US market and, per its CEO, equipping its next-generation satellites with AIS receivers to help detect “dark vessels” at sea that switch off tracking transponders.
Founded in 2016, Kuva Space has raised more than €22 million to date from investors including Voima Ventures, Nordic Foodtech VC, Earth VC and VTT, alongside non-equity funding from Business Finland and ESA Philab. Its Hyperfield-1A and 1B satellites, launched in August 2024 and June 2025 respectively, form the first generation of a constellation the company plans to scale to around 100 satellites by 2030, eventually generating roughly 100 terabytes of hyperspectral data daily. A second-generation satellite, Hyperfield-2, with expanded spectral coverage, is slated for launch this year. In June, Kuva Space won a contract under NASA’s Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition program, running through November 2028 — a win the company says strengthens its position across both Europe’s Copernicus Earth-observation ecosystem and the US federal procurement pipeline.
SharpNav: navigation that can’t be jammed
As GPS jamming and spoofing become routine threats near conflict zones, Helsinki-based SharpNav is building a resilient alternative: a low-Earth-orbit positioning constellation combining beamforming, AI, and MIMO techniques to deliver accuracy down to centimetres, even under interference. Emerging from ESA’s Business Incubation Centre Finland, the startup plans to launch a Nordic pilot of four to six satellites before scaling toward a 300-satellite global network serving defence, aviation, and autonomous systems.
Founded by Eldrige de Melo, SharpNav progressed through the ESA BIC Finland incubator before joining ESA Phi-Lab Finland’s programme in late 2025, and was selected for the Spring 2025 cohort of DEFINE, Finland’s leading defence accelerator, chosen from more than 80 applicants. Its stated focus is the “High North” — Finland and territory beyond the 60th parallel, where conventional GNSS coverage is weakest and least reliable. Rather than replacing existing satellite navigation outright, SharpNav’s system is designed to remain compatible with today’s GNSS infrastructure while adding resilience layers — encrypted, redundant signals engineered to keep functioning under electronic warfare conditions, filling a gap the company argues is increasingly urgent for defence, aviation, and autonomous vehicles operating in the Nordic and Arctic region.
A cluster with a common thread
All four sit within the same tight radius of Helsinki and Espoo, and all increasingly serve the same customer base: governments seeking sovereign, jam-resistant, allied alternatives to foreign-owned space infrastructure — a shift that has turned Finland’s small, engineering-dense talent pool into a genuine strategic asset.
