👯 Founder(s): Nicola Garzaniti (Founder & CEO) and Simone Briatore (Co-founder & CTO)
📅 Founding year: 2017
🏭 Industry: Spacetech / deep-tech hardware
💥 Problem: The radio-frequency spectrum is congested, and laser communication terminals have been hard to manufacture economically at scale and difficult for customers to integrate and operate.
📣 Solution: Laser communication terminals built on a common, software-defined architecture that reduce reliance on the host platform's pointing, ease integration, and let multiple terminals run on one spacecraft or aircraft. They have two products: ERMESAI+ (space) and ARES (airborne/drones).
👥 Customers: Satellite operators and constellation builders planning next-generation networks (paying customers from day one; names not disclosed); airborne/high-altitude platform operators. In advanced talks for programs involving several thousand systems.
🎳 Team size: 2-10
🌱 Stage: Seed (first external/institutional round)
💰 Investment amount: €4M ($4.5M)
🚀 Funded by: Join Capital and PhotonVentures (co-leads), with participation from Takeoff (the aerospace/advanced-hardware accelerator in the CDP Venture Capital National Accelerator Network, managed by Plug and Play).
👁️🗨️ Investor's perspective:
"Golbriak already has functioning technology, paying customers and clear demand from operators."
— Jan Borgstädt, Founding Partner at Join Capital.
💡 It will be spent on: Accelerating development and industrialization of the Estonian subsidiary, expanding production capacity, scaling manufacturing/assembly to meet customer volumes, moving into the new Tallinn (Mustamäe) lab and office, and recruiting.
💬 In their own words:
"Closing this round marks a turning point for Golbriak," commented Nicola Garzaniti, CEO. He added the pipeline is "ready and validated, it's just a matter of scaling." Simone Briatore, CTO, noted that investors need to understand the long timelines involved in bringing space missions to market.
💪 Their specialty: Fully in-house design of the optical, electronic, mechanical and software elements on one software-defined platform — hardware reconfigurable in software for different networks/standards (SDA, ESTOL, CCSDS). Only semiconductors are sourced externally. Production-ready systems from 2.5 Gbps, with a 10 Gbps system planned for 2027. Scaling from double-digit terminals/year today toward a target of 200/month (long-term 300–400).
🔑 Business model: Designs and manufactures laser communication terminals sold to satellite/constellation operators and airborne platform operators; customer-funded deployments across commercial space programs expanding its footprint from 2027.
💸 Funding so far: ~€4M ($4.5M)
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