Illkirch-Graffenstaden, France (Leanspace PR) — Leanspace, the company building the digital infrastructure of the space industry, is today announcing a major milestone in its development with the closing of an oversubscribed Seed financing round of €6m ($6.4m). The funding will be used to scale up Leanspace’s cloud services platform, and was led by Karista and 42CAP, with complementary non-dilutive financing from Bpifrance. The new investors join leading space organizations already backing Leanspace, like Seraphim Space, the International Space University and strategic business angels.

The commercialization of the space industry and the ‘NewSpace’ paradigm have complexified, rather than simplified, the management of space missions. On top of the legacy requirements we’ve seen for decades: reliability, trust and bespoke developments, space programmes of today come with new needs: a drastic increase in agility and reduction of costs.

PARIS (CNES PR) — Karista announces the first closing of CosmiCapital, its venture capital fund initiated by CNES and entirely dedicated to NewSpace. Subscribed in particular by CNES, initiator of the fund, and the National Seed Fund 2 (FNA 2), managed on behalf of the State by Bpifrance, within the framework of the Future Investments Program (PIA), the fund will have an investment capacity of 38 million euros [US $43.9 million] to fulfill its main objective: take advantage of the unprecedented acceleration of the space economy and invest in French and European technology start-ups in the sector. With this closing, Karista completes its range of funds to become a European multi-fund venture management platform.