- The company Golbriak Space has raised 4 million euros in a seed financing round, jointly led by Join Capital and PhotonVentures.
- Its terminals require less accurate pointing from the host satellite or drone, making them easier to integrate and enabling a single platform to carry multiple terminals.
- The fresh funds will be used to accelerate the development and industrialisation.
In November 2017, researchers at universities were awarded the Copernicus Masters, commonly referred to as the Space Oscars, for their proposal on two CubeSats communicating via lasers.
The two doctoral students involved in the project, Nicola Garzaniti and Simone Briatore, later set up a company based on this laser terminal technology. Eight years later, their startup, Golbriak Space, raised €4 million to increase production of these terminals to thousands of units.
Join Capital and PhotonVentures co-led the seed round, and Takeoff, an accelerator operated by Plug and Play within CDP Venture Capital’s national network for aerospace and advanced hardware, also took part.
From student project to seed funding
Golbriak was founded in 2017, and its head office is in Tallinn, Estonia.
The company’s first project was developing an optical link terminal for FSSCat, a two-CubeSat mission launched in September 2020. Golbriak’s own timeline refers only to in-orbit testing of key components and avionics, not the completion of a full laser link between the two spacecraft.
According to CB Insights, the company had raised a total of $130,000 from two previous rounds, including a convertible note received in July 2023 from Plug and Play Turin, the organisation that operates the Takeoff accelerator.
The money was invested in Iribits S.r.l., Golbriak’s Italian holding company, which will in turn finance its Estonian operating company, Golbriak Space OÜ. Golbriak also took part in the second Takeoff programme in Turin and joined ESA BIC Estonia, the European Space Agency’s business incubator.
The technology in a nutshell
A laser terminal transmits data between satellites, aircraft, and ground stations using a narrow beam of light rather than radio waves, helping avoid crowded radio frequencies. The primary difficulty lies in making the terminals affordable and easy to produce in large numbers, as well as making them simple for customers to use.
According to Golbriak, its terminals require less accurate pointing from the host satellite or drone, making them easier to integrate and enabling a single platform to carry multiple terminals.
The hardware can be configured via software for various networks and standards, such as those of the US Space Development Agency, the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems, and ESTOL, since the wavelengths correspond. Golbriak also designs its own optics, electronics, mechanics, and software.
Golbriak offers two product ranges: ERMESAI+ for use in space and ARES for aircraft. Currently, its systems support data rates beginning at 2.5 gigabits per second, with a 10 Gbps system being planned for 2027. The company has demonstrated end-to-end data transmission via a laser link involving a moving drone, and its website offers an optical downlink service starting at €18 per minute at 1 Gbps.
Garzaniti said, “Years of research, specialised engineering and customer validation have gone into solving the practical challenges that determine whether laser communications can operate reliably at scale. We have addressed the key challenges required for large-scale deployment of optical communications. We have functioning products, paying customers and demand that is now expanding towards programmes involving thousands of terminals.”
The competitiveness of the industry can be demonstrated by the example of Mynaric, a German manufacturer of terminal equipment, which underwent a restructuring process that left shareholders with nothing. In April 2026, Rocket Lab, as reported by Tech Funding News, was to acquire Iridium for $8 billion, and it acquired Mynaric.
Who is backing it, and the market behind it
The fresh funds will be used to accelerate the development and industrialisation.
Jan Borgstädt, a founding partner of Join Capital, stated: “Golbriak already has functioning technology, paying customers and clear demand from operators planning the next generation of satellite networks. Years of specialised engineering have created a significant technological and commercial lead.”
Pieter Klinkert, co-founder and general partner at PhotonVentures, added, “Golbriak combines advanced photonics with a highly scalable architecture. With demand moving towards constellation-scale deployments, we see significant potential for Golbriak to become a leading supplier of optical communication terminals for the global space industry.”
The market for optical satellite communication will grow from $0.62 billion in 2025 to $1.56 billion in 2030, a compound annual growth rate of 20.4%.
Laser links have proven viable, since customers are now placing orders and carrying out acquisitions. Golbriak has a harder task: showing that a seed-stage company providing 2.5 Gbps products can turn discussions with thousands of terminals into signed contracts and actual manufacturing operations.
