Foundational secures £8.2M pre-seed as it emerges from stealth

London-based space technology company Foundational has emerged from stealth with £8.2 million in pre-seed funding to expand its satellite positioning infrastructure and further develop its data platform. Participants in the round include Inflection, BACKED, Final Frontier, Adjacent and Type One Ventures.

Founded in 2025 by Hira Virdee and Dave Gooding, Foundational is developing technology for collecting, processing and delivering precise positioning data for satellites, with applications spanning navigation and positioning, Earth observation and surveying, as well as maritime and aviation.

The company is focused on automating and scaling Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR), a method used to determine the position of satellites and other objects in orbit. SLR works by firing laser pulses from a ground station towards a retroreflector on a satellite and measuring the time it takes for the light to return, enabling millimetre-level ranging precision.

Foundational combines satellite-mounted retroreflectors, automated ground-based laser stations and a software platform that processes and delivers the resulting data. By bringing these components together into a vertically integrated system, the company aims to turn SLR into a scalable commercial service.

The technology builds on laser-ranging systems originally developed at Lumi Space, which Virdee founded in 2018 with support from the European Space Agency and UK Space Agency. Foundational was established to move the technology from research and development into commercial deployment.

Its customers and partners include operators of low Earth orbit satellite constellations, the European Space Agency, UK government departments and agencies, aerospace manufacturers, research institutes and companies developing commercial space technologies.

As the number of satellites and debris in low Earth orbit increases, satellite operators need increasingly precise information about the location of objects and changes in their trajectories. Data generated through SLR can support applications including space traffic control, resilient navigation and Earth observation.

Satellite Laser Ranging is the gold standard, and is one of the most precise measurement tools humanity has built, capable of pinpointing a satellite to within millimetres, but until now it's been too costly and too complex to use at scale. By bringing the hardware, ground network and data platform together under one roof, we're rebuilding a critical layer of space infrastructure for the commercial era,

said Hira Virdee, CEO and co-founder of Foundational.

Foundational will use the funding to expand its ground-station network, vertically integrate the manufacturing of its space-based hardware, increase production of its retroreflector products and further develop its data platform. The company ultimately plans to establish a global network providing positioning data to satellite operators, insurers and governments.