ESA Member States Back SWISSto12 HummingSat
Invest $84.8 Million to Support the ARTES Partnership Project
Several ESA member states have invested some €73 million ($84.8 million) in financial support to SWISSto12 through the HummingSat ARTES partnership project.
“ESA is committed to elevating Europe’s future in space through our support of industry, and by accelerating next-generation satellite technologies.”
Laurent Jaffart, ESA
The funding will accelerate SWISSto12’s development and industrialization of HummingSat, as well as scaling up its manufacturing capacity and accelerating 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 LEO/MEO/GEO satellite payloads and ground products such as user terminals. This will strengthen its ability to serve a broad set of customer needs, for communications from and to geostationary and non-geostationary orbits.
“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,” said Laurent Jaffart, ESA Director of Connectivity and Secure Communications. “ESA is committed to elevating Europe’s future in space through our support of industry, and by accelerating next-generation satellite technologies.”
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.
SWISSto12 is enabling a transformational shift in the global satellite communications industry, away from legacy, large, purpose-built, expensive and slow-to-deploy solutions towards smaller, faster, cheaper assets that leverage software-defined, reconfigurable payload architectures and agile, multi-orbit capabilities. The global need for SatCom is rising, reflecting a growing demand for always-on broadband internet connectivity for aircraft and ships, secure communications for sovereign governments, internet in remote regions, safety-relevant services, IoT devices and location-based services.
“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,” said Emile de Rijk, CEO and Founder of SWISSto12. “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.”
Developed in partnership with ESA and scheduled for first launch in 2027, the HummingSat platform is significantly 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.