French startup Leanspace steers ahead with €6 million to help companies manage their space missions

French startup building the digital infrastructure of the space industry, Leanspace has announced the second closing of its €6 million seed round. The additional investment comes from Budapest-based European Space VC Herius Capital. Herius joins existing investors Karista, 42CAP, Seraphim Space and Bpifrance.

The space sector still relies on software tools developed decades ago, and on heavily manual processes to move and share data. Thus, digitalisation is the key stepping stone towards reaching higher operational efficiency.

With its cloud platform, the platform enables space organisations to leverage digital technologies to manage their space missions. It enables space companies to implement a comprehensive software strategy, and adopt new approaches like regaining full in-house control over their software ecosystem, implementing digital continuity across tools and teams, and finding ways to abstract their engineers from the complexity of space software.

Alvaro Alonso Ruiz, co-founder and CCO of Leanspace said: “Space organisations use software to design satellites, control test benches, operate assets, derive analytics, produce and distribute products, manage customer relationships… When all your organisation’s operations are fueled by software, it is undeniable that your business is a software business. The challenge space companies face is putting in place a modern and comprehensive software strategy across their entire organization.”

Dr. Kornél Szabó, managing partner of Herius Capital added: “LeanSpace aims to digitalise the space industry via the cloud. We see modern software tools as critical enabling infrastructure for the space industry.  LeanSpace’s team is building such critical software infrastructure with their deep technical and space industry experience.”