French in-orbit manufacturing startup ArcSpace plans to demonstrate its welding technology aboard a host spacecraft in 2027.

Češi z Depo Ventures jsou mezi hlavními investory do francouzské technologie, která má zajistit opravy, úpravy a servis družic přímo na oběžné dráze. Vyvíjí ji startup ArcSpace a má formu kompaktního zařízení založeného na vysokoenergetickém elektronovém paprsku. Ten má dokázat i ve vakuu řezat, spojovat a svařovat materiály, aniž by při procesu vznikal nebezpečný odpad. Český fond chce peníze směřovat do projektu i kvůli jeho využití v kritické infrastruktuře. ArcSpace má umět opravovat i ty družice, u nichž se s podobným servisem původně vůbec nepočítalo. „Tato schopnost zásadně snižuje rizika a zabezpečuje kritickou infrastrukturu, na které jsme jako společnost stále více závislí,” komentuje partner fondu Petr Šíma. „Doposud fungoval vesmírný průmysl v podstatě na jednorázovém principu. Když se něco pokazilo nebo družici došlo palivo, ztratili jsme infrastrukturu za stovky milionů eur,” vysvětluje Guillaume Mohara, výkonný ředitel a spoluzakladatel startupu ArcSpace. Startup získal celkem 48 milionů Kč, peníze mají směřovat mimo jiné na kvalifikaci letového hardwaru a přípravu první demonstrační mise. Ta se má uskutečnit příští rok. Cílem je uvést produkt do komerčního využití do roku 2028. Trh pro servis, montáž a výrobu ve vesmíru se rozvíjí mimořádně rychle. Očekává se, že do roku 2033 vytvoří nové příjmy ve výši 130 miliard eur a bude hlavním tahounem růstu celé vesmírné ekonomiky. Investici vedl fond Depo Ventures One společně se syndikátem andělských investorů. Připojily se také fondy SCE Freiraum Ventures a IRDI Capital Investissement a síť French Business Angels. Petr Šíma (Depo Ventures): Infrastruktura pro AI je dost možná bublina. Dobře, že jsme zaspali

👋 **Inside this week's edition:** 👀 French startup **ArcSpace** has raised more than €2 million to test its compact electron-beam welding and cutting system in orbit in 2027, starting with satellite repair before targeting orbital manufacturing and space infrastructure. Co-Founder and CEO Guillaume Mohara explains the lofty vision. **Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand** * * * SPONSORED ****A founder-only breakfast in Paris**** : Ahead of Vanta's Trust Tour Paris, we're hosting a small-room session for founders: ****Growth Breakfast Club: Build the Product, Buy the Trust**** , ****September 15, 9:30–11:30 AM, Le Grand Hôtel Cayré.**** ****Christina Cacioppo**** , Co-Founder & CEO of Vanta, and ****Gabriel Hubert**** , Co-Founder & CEO of Dust, sit down to talk about why the best-scaling teams are ruthless about what they build in-house and just as deliberate about what they buy. Expect real talk on: * Why build vs. buy is a habit, not a one-time call * How Dust scales multiplayer AI without losing team alignment * Why compliance is one of the clearest buy-not-build decisions Request To Join * * * # Tech Talk 🤗🤑 It's done. **Nvidia** is buying **Hugging Face** for $12.93 billion, scooping up the Franco-American company that has become the de facto town square for open-source AI. Naturally, the finalization of the deal prompted celebration (largest non-IPO exit for French founders!) and lamentations (the three co-founders left early for NYC and there was little French investment in the cap table!) Whatever. The numbers explain some of the enthusiasm. AI registry Hugging Face now hosts nearly 3 million models and is used by millions of developers, giving Nvidia a front-row seat to what builders are actually downloading, tweaking and deploying. Nvidia and Hugging Face insist the platform will remain open, independent and compute-agnostic. For CEO Clément Delangue (who co-founded the company as a chatbot startup with Thomas Wolf and Julien Chaumond before pivoting), the deal is about giving open-source AI more compute, infrastructure and visibility while pursuing an ambition to reach 100 million AI builders. For Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the strategic logic is that the more open AI gets built and used, the more compute the world needs, and Nvidia remains extremely enthusiastic about selling that compute. Hugging Face was last valued at $4.5 billion in 2023, so Nvidia is paying close to three times that figure. The paycheck reportedly includes $1 billion in retention bonuses for Hugging Face employees. | Nvidia, Clem Delangue on LinkedIn, WSJ, The New York Times The early Hugging Face chatbot website, circa 1863 ⚛️📉 **Pasqal** has officially traded the Paris startup circuit for the Nasdaq, completing its **SPAC merger with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. II** and emerging with roughly $360 million in cash to fund the next phase of its quantum ambitions. The neutral-atom specialist now trades under the ticker PSQL and plans to spend that money on building more machines, expanding production as it pushes toward the industry’s great promised land: fault-tolerant quantum computing. More than 90% of Bleichroeder’s public shareholders redeemed their shares before the merger, meaning most of that $360 million did not actually come from eager Nasdaq investors waving checks at French quantum. Still, Pasqal now has a deep pool of public capital and a mechanism for coming back for more when quantum physics inevitably gets expensive. The company already has seven QPUs deployed, three more in production and more than 25 commercial and research applications. Pasqal is keeping its headquarters and core technology in France and plans a future Euronext Paris listing. | EU-Startups, FrenchWeb 💶 🤖**Mistral AI** is reportedly close to finalizing its long-rumored €3 billion Series D led by Samsung, with Nvidia, ASML and the EU’s new Scaleup Fund also joining the round, which would value the French AI champion at around €21 billion post-money. The Sifted Scoophounds report that the round is oversubscribed, with Samsung taking the biggest ticket and the EU fund contributing roughly €300 million. | Sifted 🤖🫰French robotics startup **Wandercraft** is reportedly looking to raise around **€100 million** at a pre-money valuation of roughly **€750 million** , with Goldman Sachs helping run the process, according to Bloomberg. The company, which makes both rehabilitation exoskeletons and humanoid robots for industry, raised $75 million last year from investors including Renault. It now plans to deploy 350 Wandercraft robots across factories in France and Spain by the end of 2027. And last month, its medical exoskeleton Eve received approval from the US FDA. | Bloomberg**,** Wandercraft ⚽🏅💰 **Sorare** has dipped back into the funding well, raising a new eight-figure round from longtime backers Benchmark, Accel, Partech and Kibo Ventures, with founders Nicolas Julia and Adrien Montfort also putting in money. It’s not quite the $680 million, $4.3 billion-valuation madness of 2021, but after several bruising years that included a restructuring that cut roughly 35% of staff last November, the French fantasy-sports company finally has some nicer numbers to talk about. The company did not officially release the amount, but Julia told Maddyness that it is in the "8-figure" range, with a first tranche closed and a second on the way. What's less clear is how much of this may be new equity versus a recapitalization or...? Julia noted that three years ago "we started rebuilding Sorare from the ground up." He said that net revenue jumped 85% year-over-year in the first half of 2026, while its new free-to-play Arcade mode helped bring in more than 1 million new users over the past 18 months. Julia says the fresh cash will fund more products and growth, while Sorare now aims to get back to profitability by the end of 2027. There is, naturally, a small regulatory cloud hovering over the comeback story. Sorare is still fighting the UK Gambling Commission over whether its game constitutes unlicensed gambling, with a trial scheduled for June 2027, while British authorities have frozen £10 million in Premier League funds linked to the former Sorare partnership.| Julia on X, Maddyness, Yahoo 🏥🛍️ French surgical robotics company **eCential Robotics** is set to be acquired by U.S. medtech group **Enovis** , which wants to fold the Grenoble company’s robotic surgery platform into its orthopedic technology portfolio. The deal is reportedly includes about €176 million in cash to be paid to shareholders at closing, plus up to €35 million in contingent consideration tied to milestones. | PR, StockTitan, LinkedIn ⚖️👨‍⚖️ **LexisNexis** parent **RELX** has completed its acquisition of Paris legal-tech startup **Doctrine** , a few months after the deal was announced. The deal, whose price remains undisclosed, brings together LexisNexis’ 200 years of legal content and roughly 200 billion documents with Doctrine’s AI-powered research. | LeFigaro 🛠️ 🛰️**Hexa** continues to venture beyond its SaaS comfort zone and into hardware and deeptech, hiring Belgian aerospace-and-energy entrepreneur **Guerric de Crombrugghe** as a Partner to hunt for opportunities in defense, energy, and AI infrastructure. The startup studio says it wants to focus on technologies that are already scientifically proven but commercially underexploited. De Crombrugghe is already working on **WaterX** , for atmospheric water generators, and **Pong** , which wants to put satellite ground stations on commercial ships. | Maddyness 🚗🤖 France has authorized road tests of **Tesla’s** **Full Self-Driving (Supervised)** system, just two months after saying it was too risky following a “constructive exchange” between Elon Musk and Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot. Tesla will initially provide two vehicles for the trials, as France joins a growing group of European countries cautiously opening the door to supervised autonomous driving. | EuroNews **🌀🥼 Kyutai** is adding a commercial arm, Kyutai Transfer, to help turn the non-profit French AI lab’s open research into things companies can actually deploy. The nonprofit lab itself will remain focused on open science, while the new entity will handle consulting, training, integration, and other technology-transfer work around projects such as Moshi and Pocket TTS. | L'Informé Become a paid subscriber * * * # ArcSpace Wants to Build the Welding Tools for the Space Economy Guillaume Mohara, Cofounder, CEO & CTO @ArcSpace ArcSpace is working on a problem that sounds almost mundane by space-industry standards: how to weld metal once you are already in orbit. The French startup, founded in 2022 by Guillaume Mohara and Adam Abdin, has developed a compact electron-beam system designed to join and cut metal in space. It has raised more than €2 million in a round led by Czech VC firm DEPO Ventures, with SCE Freiraum Ventures, IRDI Capital Investissement and a French business angels network also participating. ArcSpace plans to use the funding to prepare an orbital demonstration in 2027. But the company is building toward a market that, in its biggest form, barely exists yet. Go Inside ArcSpace * * * # 💸 Top Funding Deals 💸 📇 Company: Lupin Dental 🏷️ Sectors: MedTech, Robotics 🔍 Description: Lupin Dental develops supervised robotic systems for minimally invasive dental procedures. Its Lupin Robotic System combines treatment-planning software with a robotic workstation that automates tooth preparation for aesthetic veneers, aiming to improve precision, clinical workflows, and patient outcomes. 💻 Website: https://lupindental.com/ 📍 HQ City: Montpellier 🧗 Round: Series A 💰 Amount Raised: €15 million 🏦 Investors: Fynveur, Bpifrance 👨💼👩💼 Founders: Dr. Galip Gürel, Dr. Stefen Koubi 🗞️ News: Lupin Dental has closed a €15 million Series A to accelerate development and adoption of its robotic technology for dental procedures. Fynveur led the round with a €10 million investment, alongside existing shareholders and private investors, with additional loan financing from Bpifrance. The company’s flagship Lupin Robotic System uses software to design a patient's final smile and treatment plan before a robotic workstation executes the required minimally invasive tooth preparation for veneers. The system received UKCA certification in June 2026, enabling commercialization in Great Britain, following earlier regulatory clearance in India, although it is not yet approved for clinical use in the EU or US. Lupin Dental will use the financing to expand partnerships with academic and medical institutions, dentists, and Dental Service Organizations as it works toward broader adoption of its technology. | EU-Startups * * * 📇 Company: Huscarl 🏷️ Sectors: InsurTech, AI, SaaS 🔍 Description: Huscarl develops an AI-powered actuarial platform for corporations, self-insured companies, insurance captives, and risk retention groups. Its autonomous AI actuary ingests unstructured data and automates workflows, including risk modeling, pricing, reserving, and capital analysis, with studies reviewed and signed by credentialed human actuaries. 💻 Website: http://huscarl.io/ 📍 HQ City: Paris 🧗 Round: Seed 💰 Amount Raised: $5.6 million 🏦 Investors: FRST, Y Combinator, MS&AD Ventures, Business Angels 👨💼👩💼 Founders: Alexandre Musy, Paulien Jeunesse 🗞️ News: Huscarl has raised $5.6 million in Seed funding led by FRST to accelerate development of its AI actuarial platform and expansion in the United States. The Y Combinator-backed startup helps companies use self-insurance and captive structures by automating actuarial work, including modeling, pricing, reserving, and capital analysis. Huscarl offers one-off actuarial studies, appointed-actuary services for captives, and outsourced underwriting for group captives and risk retention groups, while keeping credentialed human actuaries responsible for reviewing and signing its studies. The company says it has already worked with a risk retention group and a single-parent captive belonging to a company generating more than $2 billion in revenue. Huscarl was founded by former Descartes Underwriting employees Alexandre Musy and Paulien Jeunesse, who previously worked together on cyber parametric insurance. | LinkedIn, Coverager * * * 📇 Company: ColibriTD 🏷️ Sectors: Quantum Computing, DeepTech 🔍 Description: ColibriTD develops a hardware-agnostic quantum-powered multiphysics simulation platform built around H-DES, its proprietary hybrid quantum-classical algorithm for solving partial differential equations. The company targets computationally intensive applications across defense, aerospace, semiconductors, energy, automotive, climate science, and quantitative finance. 💻 Website: https://www.colibritd.com/ 📍 HQ City: Paris 🧗 Round: Seed 💰 Amount Raised: €4 million 🏦 Investors: Earlybird Venture Capital, SymbiaVC, Medin VC 👨💼👩💼 Founders: Laurent Guiraud, Hacène Goudjil 🗞️ News: ColibriTD has raised €4 million in Seed funding to accelerate development of its quantum simulation platform and expand internationally. Earlybird Venture Capital led the round, which previously backed the company’s €1 million pre-Seed round, with participation from SymbiaVC and Medin VC. Founded in 2019, ColibriTD has completed seven co-construction projects across six industrial sectors, including work with groups such as Thales, ESA and BMW. The company will use the funding to invest further in H-DES R&D, recruit quantum researchers and domain experts, expand hardware and academic partnerships, and scale client deployments. ColibriTD currently employs around 20 people and is positioning its platform as a software layer that can translate advances in quantum hardware into practical industrial applications. | EU-Startups, La Revue Digitale * * * 👋🏻 If you’re enjoying The French Tech Journal, support the project by forwarding it to friends and sharing it on your social networks. You can also comment on this post. And if you have ideas for stories, tips, or just want to harass us, shoot us an email: chris@frenchtechjournal.com / helen@frenchtechjournal.com 👋🏻‌

La société développe une soudeuse de moins de 2 kg pour réparer les satellites en plein vide spatial. De quoi accélérer l'arrivée des services en orbite.

# 🧮 Data Point: Hugging Face $$$ In the wake of the Nvidia deal for Hugging Face, the good folks at Dealroom attempted to wrestle with the question who made what from this deal? These seven charts offer some approximation of just how much the AI registry has increased in value over the years... ...and who should be picking up your bar tab, well, forever. That is, assuming the deal closes as expected some time early next year. Become a paid subscriber * * * SPONSORED Relationship context is the richest data your team owns, but contacts and conversations are scattered across Gmail, LinkedIn, calendars, and WhatsApp. folk captures that context across channels and turns it into a shared memory for every relationship. Using folk’s MCP, your team can chat with your CRM data like a conversation: ask folk which deals stalled, who last spoke to a lead, or what happened on an account. 5,000+ companies use folk to close more deals. Start for free today with a 14-day trial. Start for free * * * # 💸 Weekly Funding Recap: September 4 * * * 📇 Company: Lupin Dental 🏷️ Sectors: MedTech, Robotics 🔍 Description: Lupin Dental develops supervised robotic systems for minimally invasive dental procedures. Its Lupin Robotic System combines treatment-planning software with a robotic workstation that automates tooth preparation for aesthetic veneers, aiming to improve precision, clinical workflows, and patient outcomes. 💻 Website: https://lupindental.com/ 📍 HQ City: Montpellier 🧗 Round: Series A 💰 Amount Raised: €15 million 🏦 Investors: Fynveur, Bpifrance 👨💼👩💼 Founders: Dr. Galip Gürel, Dr. Stefen Koubi 🗞️ News: Lupin Dental has closed a €15 million Series A to accelerate development and adoption of its robotic technology for dental procedures. Fynveur led the round with a €10 million investment, alongside existing shareholders and private investors, with additional loan financing from Bpifrance. The company’s flagship Lupin Robotic System uses software to design a patient's final smile and treatment plan before a robotic workstation executes the required minimally invasive tooth preparation for veneers. The system received UKCA certification in June 2026, enabling commercialization in Great Britain, following earlier regulatory clearance in India, although it is not yet approved for clinical use in the EU or US. Lupin Dental will use the financing to expand partnerships with academic and medical institutions, dentists, and Dental Service Organizations as it works toward broader adoption of its technology. | EU-Startups * * * 📇 Company: Lys Therapeutics 🏷️ Sectors: BioTech, HealthTech 🔍 Description: Advanced preclinical biotech developing LYS241, a humanized monoclonal antibody designed to block the tPA-NMDAr pathway in neurodegenerative and neurovascular diseases, including Parkinson’s disease, synucleinopathies and ischemic stroke. 💻 Website: https://lys-tx.com/ 📍 HQ City: Lyon, Caen 🧗 Round: Growth Equity 💰 Amount Raised: **€13M** 🏦 Investors: Normandie Participation, TCD Capital, FIDAT Ventures, ZCUBE 👨💼👩💼 Founders: Manuel Blanc, Philippe Dujardin, Thibault Honegger 🗞️ News: Lys Therapeutics said its cumulative funding since its 2021 founding has passed €25M, including equity, non-dilutive public funding and foundation support. The company has previously disclosed **€12M in fuding across seven previous rounds** , including a €3M seed round, Bpifrance and France 2030 grants, and Michael J. Fox Foundation awards. It will use the resources to complete regulatory studies, secure industrial manufacturing and prepare a biomarker-rich Phase 1a/1b trial for LYS241. | PR * * * 📇 Company: Huscarl 🏷️ Sectors: InsurTech, AI, SaaS 🔍 Description: Huscarl develops an AI-powered actuarial platform for corporations, self-insured companies, insurance captives, and risk retention groups. Its autonomous AI actuary ingests unstructured data and automates workflows, including risk modeling, pricing, reserving, and capital analysis, with studies reviewed and signed by credentialed human actuaries. 💻 Website: http://huscarl.io/ 📍 HQ City: Paris 🧗 Round: Seed 💰 Amount Raised: €4.82 million 🏦 Investors: FRST, Y Combinator, MS&AD Ventures, Business Angels 👨💼👩💼 Founders: Alexandre Musy, Paulien Jeunesse 🗞️ News: Huscarl has raised $5.6 million in Seed funding led by FRST to accelerate development of its AI actuarial platform and expansion in the United States. The Y Combinator-backed startup helps companies use self-insurance and captive structures by automating actuarial work, including modeling, pricing, reserving, and capital analysis. Huscarl offers one-off actuarial studies, appointed-actuary services for captives, and outsourced underwriting for group captives and risk retention groups, while keeping credentialed human actuaries responsible for reviewing and signing its studies. The company says it has already worked with a risk retention group and a single-parent captive belonging to a company generating more than $2 billion in revenue. Huscarl was founded by former Descartes Underwriting employees Alexandre Musy and Paulien Jeunesse, who previously worked together on cyber parametric insurance. | LinkedIn, Coverager * * * 📇 Company: ColibriTD 🏷️ Sectors: Quantum Computing, DeepTech 🔍 Description: ColibriTD develops a hardware-agnostic quantum-powered multiphysics simulation platform built around H-DES, its proprietary hybrid quantum-classical algorithm for solving partial differential equations. The company targets computationally intensive applications across defense, aerospace, semiconductors, energy, automotive, climate science, and quantitative finance. 💻 Website: https://www.colibritd.com/ 📍 HQ City: Paris 🧗 Round: Seed 💰 Amount Raised: €4 million 🏦 Investors: Earlybird Venture Capital, SymbiaVC, Medin VC 👨💼👩💼 Founders: Laurent Guiraud, Hacène Goudjil 🗞️ News: ColibriTD has raised €4 million in Seed funding to accelerate development of its quantum simulation platform and expand internationally. Earlybird Venture Capital led the round, which previously backed the company’s €1 million pre-Seed round, with participation from SymbiaVC and Medin VC. Founded in 2019, ColibriTD has completed seven co-construction projects across six industrial sectors, including work with groups such as Thales, ESA and BMW. The company will use the funding to invest further in H-DES R&D, recruit quantum researchers and domain experts, expand hardware and academic partnerships, and scale client deployments. ColibriTD currently employs around 20 people and is positioning its platform as a software layer that can translate advances in quantum hardware into practical industrial applications. | EU-Startups, La Revue Digitale * * * 📇 Company: Viraj Aero 🏷️ Sectors: ClimateTech, Aerospace, Aviation, Propulsion 🔍 Description: Toulouse-based startup developing an onboard steam-injection turbine system that recovers water from aircraft exhaust and reinjects it into the engine, aiming to reduce fuel use, CO₂, NOx emissions and non-CO₂ climate effects. 💻 Website: https://virajaero.com/ 📍 HQ City: Toulouse 🧗 Round: Seed 💰 Amount Raised: €4.5M 🏦 Investors: IRDI Capital Investissement, Climate Founders, OCSEED, ARTS Aero, Business Angels, Bpifrance 👨💼👩💼 Founders: Mathilde Bouilloux, Joseph Brisson 🗞️ News: The funding will finance flight testing of Viraj Aero’s Ailefroide demonstrator, scheduled for 2027, and grow its engineering team at Toulouse airport. The company targets a 2029 commercial launch of its EYJA system for light aviation, before adapting the technology for regional aircraft. | Les Echos, PR, La Tribune * * * 📇 Company: ArcSpace 🏷️ Sectors: SpaceTech, DeepTech 🔍 Description: Developer of a compact electron-beam system for welding and cutting metal in orbit, initially targeting satellite servicing and repair before expanding to orbital manufacturing and space infrastructure. 💻 Website: https://arc-space.com/ 📍 HQ City: Toulouse 🧗 Round: Seed 💰 Amount Raised: €2M 🏦 Investors: DEPO Ventures, SCE Freiraum Ventures, IRDI Capital Investissement, Business Angels 👨💼👩💼 Founders: Guillaume Mohara and Adam Abdin 🗞️ News: ArcSpace will use the funding to qualify its flight hardware and carry out an autonomous in-orbit demonstration in 2027. | The French Tech Journal * * * 📇 Company: Swiftask 🏷️ Sectors: Artificial Intelligence, SaaS 🔍 Description: Enterprise software platform for building, deploying and governing AI agents across business workflows. Hosted in France, it offers access to more than 80 AI models and aims to provide a vendor-neutral control layer for enterprise AI use. 💻 Website: https://swiftask.ai/ 📍 HQ City: Nantes 🧗 Round: Seed 💰 Amount Raised: €1.55M 🏦 Investors: Business Angels 👨💼👩💼 Founders: Stanislas Randriamilasoa, Matthieu Lardillet, Gaël Brisson 🗞️ News: Swiftask closed its first funding round in August 2026 to expand direct sales and its distributor network in France, Europe and Africa. Launched in late 2024, the company says its platform already serves more than 100 customers and supports 14,000 active AI agents. | FinYear * * * 📇 Company: TheraSonic 🏷️ Sectors: MedTech, HealthTech, NeuroTech, Robots 🔍 Description: CEA/CNRS spin-off developing a robot-guided focused-ultrasound device that temporarily and non-invasively opens the blood-brain barrier to improve delivery of drugs to targeted brain regions. 💻 Website: https://www.therasonic.fr/ 📍 HQ City: Paris 🧗 Round: Crowdfunding 💰 Amount Raised: €1.52M 🏦 Investors: Capital Cell 👨💼👩💼 Founders: Benoît Larrat, Anthony Novell 🗞️ News: TheraSonic’s Capital Cell campaign closed on July 31, 2026, surpassing its €1.2M target and raising €1,523,874 at a €5.8M pre-money valuation. The company plans to use the funding to industrialize and prepare the regulatory path for its clinical device, following a first-in-human programme at Gustave Roussy. | Capital Cell * * * 📇 Company: Sensing Atmospheric Intelligence 🏷️ Sectors: SpaceTech, ClimateTech 🔍 Description: Toulouse-based satellite operator providing atmospheric-intelligence data, initially focused on equipment-level detection and quantification of industrial methane emissions. Its GESat satellites combine hyperspectral sensing with physics-guided AI. 💻 Website: https://sensing-ai.eu/ 📍 HQ City: Toulouse 🧗 Round: Growth Equity 💰 Amount Raised: **Undisclosed** 👨💼👩💼 Founders: Tristan Laurent 🗞️ News: The company has rebranded from Absolut Sensing to Sensing Atmospheric Intelligence and appointed Nicolas Fabre as managing director and partner. In disclosing the funding news, it describes it as a "capital increase to finance a €12M investment plan." It will develop and launch its GEN2 hyperspectral satellite, designed to measure methane emissions below 50 kg/hour, with launch planned for late 2027 or early 2028. | Company announcement * * * 👋🏻 If you’re enjoying The French Tech Journal, support the project by forwarding it to friends and sharing it on your social networks. You can also comment on this post. And if you have ideas for stories, tips, or just want to harass us, shoot us an email: chris@frenchtechjournal.com / helen@frenchtechjournal.com 👋🏻‌

ArcSpace is working on a problem that sounds almost mundane by space-industry standards: how to weld metal once you are already in orbit. The French startup, founded in 2022 by Guillaume Mohara and Adam Abdin, has developed a compact electron-beam system designed to join and cut metal in space. It has raised more than €2 million in a round led by Czech VC firm DEPO Ventures, with SCE Freiraum Ventures, IRDI Capital Investissement and a French business angels network also participating. ArcSpace plans to use the funding to prepare an orbital demonstration in 2027. But the company is building toward a market that, in its biggest form, barely exists yet. ## **Why aren't we welding in space?** Mohara, ArcSpace's CEO and CTO, began thinking about the problem several years before starting the company. Electron-beam welding is not new. The process has been used in industrial manufacturing for decades because it can make extremely precise welds. On Earth, however, it generally requires a vacuum chamber and the systems needed to create and maintain that environment. In orbit, the vacuum is already there. "98% of what you see in the room is actually auxiliary systems that you don't need in space," Mohara said. That led him to a fairly practical engineering question: how much of an electron-beam welding system could be removed if the machine were designed from the start to operate outside Earth's atmosphere? Around 2019 and 2020, Mohara began taking the idea to companies including Airbus, Thales and Mitsubishi. He said the reaction was encouraging, but not enough to turn the concept into an immediate industrial project. The companies had other priorities and long development cycles. "They said they had other important stuff to do over the next eight to ten years," he said. Mohara eventually concluded that if he wanted to see whether the idea could work, he would have to build the company himself. That's something he said he had never previously imagined doing. ## **Don't wait for the space station** The eventual opportunity ArcSpace is chasing is much bigger than satellite repair. Mohara believes welding and cutting could become basic tools for assembling large structures in orbit. For now, most space hardware still has to survive the constraints of the launch vehicle. Satellites, stations and other structures are designed around what can fit inside a rocket fairing, then launched either fully assembled or in a limited number of modules. The International Space Station, for example, required dozens of launches and years of assembly. If components could be packed more efficiently for launch and then joined permanently once they reached orbit, engineers would have more freedom over the size and shape of what they build. "If I gave you a technology that allowed you to fit tiles in space, you could stack them very neatly on the rocket fairing and then, once you arrive in space, build a shelf that is twice the size of your rocket," Mohara said. That could eventually matter for commercial space stations, lunar infrastructure, large solar arrays and manufacturing facilities. Eventually is the operative word. Those markets are still years away, and in some cases perhaps decades. ArcSpace therefore looked for a use case customers need sooner. International Space Station ## **Step one: fix the satellites** The company has built a three-stage roadmap. Step one is in-orbit servicing, and that market already exists. Satellites run out of fuel, malfunction, or reach the end of their useful lives. As space junk grows, more servicing spacecraft are being developed to extend satellite lives or deorbit them. But there's an obvious problem: many of the satellites they need to capture were never designed to be serviced. There is no convenient handle and no standardized gripping interface. ArcSpace's solution is to use its welding technology to attach an interface plate directly to an exposed metallic surface. That creates a connection without requiring the target satellite to have been designed for servicing. The whole process is automated. Mohara compared it to "how do you refuel or mend a car when it's moving?" That is ArcSpace's first market, and the stepping stone to everything that follows. Space Junk. ©Getty Images ## **Step two: build things in orbit** The same technology can then move beyond repair to antennas, solar arrays and other spacecraft subsystems. Instead of launching a spacecraft with everything already assembled, operators could send up components and join them once they're in orbit. ArcSpace says it has identified almost 100 potential applications for joining and cutting in space. And the tool itself is unusually versatile. Its electron beam can either melt and join material or vaporize it quickly enough to cut through it. The company doesn't need one machine for welding and another for cutting. "It's the same tool," Mohara said. "You just change a parameter." The system has a compact power-management unit and battery and can currently deliver around 100 seconds of welding without recharging. ArcSpace plans to demonstrate that capability autonomously in orbit in 2027. The @ArcSpace cutter and welder ## **Step three: build space itself** The third step is the biggest and the furthest away. ArcSpace wants its technology to eventually support the construction of large space stations, lunar infrastructure, and other structures that would be difficult or impossible to launch fully assembled. Mohara estimates that market could be more than 20 years away. That raises the hardest question in ArcSpace's strategy: how do you build a deep-tech company today around a market that may not properly exist until tomorrow? ## **Sell the first use case** ArcSpace spent roughly 18 months talking to around 30 space companies, asking a simple question: If you could join and cut materials in space, what would you actually do with it? The answers produced dozens of potential applications, including satellite capture and controlling the reentry of obsolete spacecraft. That customer discovery helped the company find its first market instead of betting everything on its final one. "We understand our technology and what the client wants and the business opportunity for ourselves," Mohara said. It also helped convince investors. Space is expensive, and many of its biggest opportunities have long development timelines. ArcSpace has therefore relied partly on institutional support while developing its technology. National and European institutions currently account for around €200,000 of its annual revenue, with commercial development work beginning to grow. The company is now working with commercial space players including Exotrail and Infinite Orbits. The new funding will take its flight hardware towards qualification and the planned 2027 demonstration, with the aim of reaching full technology readiness by the end of that year. ## **The Bosch of space** ArcSpace wants to build the tools everyone else uses to build spacecraft. Mohara compares it to Bosch: a company whose technology ends up scattered throughout an industry rather than necessarily appearing on the finished product. "We want to be the invisible tool suppliers for all space projects," he said. Today, ArcSpace is a tiny welding and cutting system with seven employees. By the end of this year, Mohara hopes to grow the team to ten. In 20 years or so, Mohara imagines a very different picture: commercial stations in orbit, regular missions to the Moon and infrastructure being built rather than simply launched. If that happens, ArcSpace wants its tools to be there, joining, cutting, repairing and assembling the pieces. The space economy may be heading somewhere extraordinary. ArcSpace's bet is that getting there starts with something ordinary: the ability to build things once you've left Earth. "The big dream is to be the supplier of orbital tools for every space infrastructure project. In 20 years, if there are commercial stations in orbit and spacecraft traveling regularly to the Moon, we want our tools to be inside them. If it's bigger than a small truck, we want to help build it," he said. "That's our space."

With its announcement that it had secured €2 million in new funding, French startup ArcSpace announced plans to test an automated welding system in orbit in 2027. Founded in 2022, ArcSpace is developing compact electron-beam tools designed to weld, join and cut metallic structures in orbit for applications including spacecraft servicing and assembly. On 25 […] The post ArcSpace to Demo On-Orbit Welding Tech in 2027 appeared first on European Spaceflight.

Český fond Depo Ventures, jenž se specializuje na podporu raných startupů z tuzemska i dalších zemí střední Evropy, investuje spolu s několika dalšími subjekty do francouzské firmy ArcSpace. Té se v rámci právě uzavřeného kola podařilo vybrat dva miliony eur (zhruba 48 milionů korun) na rozvoj své technologie, díky níž bude schopna opravovat vesmírné družice a satelity přímo na oběžné dráze Země.

La start-up ArcSpace, fondée par Guillaume Mohara, s'implante à Toulouse pour se rapprocher du CNES et du Commandement de l'Espace. Elle vient de lever plus de 2 millions d'euros, notamment auprès d'Irdi Capital...

ARCSPACE lève plus de 2 millions d’euros pour transformer le servicing orbitalLa startup parisienne ARCSPACE a annoncé avoir levé plus de 2 millions d’euros pour développer une technologie de soudage et de découpe par faisceau d’électrons destinée aux opérations en orbite. L'objectif de l'entreprise