Illustration of Swissto12 HummingSat satellite in geostationary orbit for Inmarsat-8. Photo: Swissto12

SWISSto12, the Swiss smallsat company. has gained new financing, the company announced Sept. 13. It has secured a CHF 25 million ($28 million) working capital facility from UBS Switzerland, the multinational universal bank. The facility will provide SWISSto12 with flexible growth capital to meet strong customer demand for its geostationary SmallSat HummingSat. The company is a manufacturer of advanced satellite payloads and systems, including the HummingSat: a small geostationary telecommunications satellite developed in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) through its public-private-partnership program.

The company is already making its presence felt in the satellite arena. In 2022, it announced a deal to supply a HummingSat satellite to Intelsat, followed in May 2023 by a deal to supply three HummingSats to Inmarsat (since acquired by Viasat). The company currently has more than 200 million Euros ($214.6 million) in back orders from customers across its Radio Frequency (RF) products and subsystems business, partnership with ESA and recent HummingSat contracts.

“This CHF 25 million working capital facility with UBS gives us additional agility to execute on the manufacturing and delivery of our first HummingSats and address strong customer demand. With HummingSat, SWISSto12 is creating a new class of agile, high performance SmallSat for geostationary orbit that is approximately three to five times smaller and lower cost than conventional geostationary satellites, while still reliably delivering critical services,” Emile de Rijk, Founder and CEO of SWISSto12, said in a statement.