Seraphim Space Closes $100M+ Venture Fund as SpaceTech Emerges as the Backbone of the AI Economy

British space technology investment firm Seraphim Space has completed fundraising for its second private early-stage venture fund, exceeding its $100 million target in a milestone that underscores the accelerating convergence of space infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and national security strategy.

The firm confirmed on Thursday that investors in the new fund — Seraphim Space Ventures II (SSV II) — include the British Business Bank, the UK government’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF), and Saudi satellite operator Arabsat. They join existing strategic backers including Paris-listed Eutelsat, Japanese satellite communications firm SKY Perfect JSAT, and technology conglomerate NEC. Seraphim declined to disclose the fund’s final size beyond confirming it had surpassed the $100 million mark.

The fundraise brings Seraphim’s total assets under management to more than $550 million across its private and public active funds, cementing its position as one of the world’s most prolific dedicated SpaceTech investors. Since its founding in 2016, the firm has supported 149 companies across 33 countries, with its portfolio collectively raising more than £10 billion ($13.6 billion) in follow-on funding.

Build the future you deserve. Get started with our top-tier Online courses: ACCA, HESI A2, ATI TEAS 7, HESI EXIT, NCLEX-RN, NCLEX-PN, and Financial Literacy. Let Serrari Ed guide your path to success. Enroll today.

SpaceTech as Foundational AI Infrastructure

The timing of the fund close reflects a broader structural shift in how investors and governments view the space sector — no longer as a niche science domain, but as critical digital infrastructure for the emerging AI economy.

“SpaceTech is fast becoming the foundational enabler for artificial intelligence and digital systems that will power the global economy,” said Seraphim Space CEO Mark Boggett in a statement. “This latest close of our current venture fund empowers us to continue championing breakthrough innovations that will shape industries and deliver meaningful, long-term benefits for our planet over the coming decade and beyond.”

Boggett pointed to SpaceX’s recent acquisition of xAI — Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company — as a defining signal of the direction the industry is heading. The deal, announced on February 2, 2026, and valued at a combined $1.25 trillion, brought together SpaceX’s orbital launch infrastructure and Starlink satellite internet network with xAI’s Grok AI models and the X social media platform under a single corporate entity. Musk framed the merger as essential for building space-based data centres, arguing that solar-powered orbital computing would eventually become the most cost-efficient solution for running large-scale AI workloads.

“Over time, the makeup of Seraphim’s investments has evolved alongside the SpaceTech sector itself,” Boggett said. “Early funds were heavily weighted towards core space infrastructure and hardware-led companies, reflecting where innovation and risk appetite sat in the market at that time. As the sector matured, the focus shifted towards software-driven, data-intensive companies, particularly those applying AI and machine learning to satellite-derived data.”

Boggett also noted a marked increase in Seraphim’s exposure to dual-use commercial and government technologies — those with both defence, security, and national resilience applications — a trend directly tied to rising geopolitical tensions and escalating government spending on sovereign space capabilities.

A $1.8 Trillion Market Opportunity

The scale of the opportunity attracting capital to the space sector has rarely been clearer. According to a landmark joint report by the World Economic Forum and McKinsey & Company, the global space economy is forecast to reach $1.8 trillion by 2035, up from $630 billion in 2023 — an average annual growth rate roughly double that of global GDP. The report finds that five industries — supply chain and transportation, food and beverage, state-sponsored defence, retail and consumer goods, and digital communications — will together generate more than 60% of that growth.

The number of funds willing to invest in space technology has grown considerably since Seraphim launched its inaugural private venture fund. Specialist investors such as Space Capital, SpaceFund, Starbridge Venture Capital, and Starburst Aerospace now compete for deals alongside generalist investors that have increasingly recognised space as a strategic sector. Private sector investment in the space industry reached an all-time high of approximately $70 billion in both 2021 and 2022, according to the WEF-McKinsey report, before cooling amid higher interest rates.

The number of satellites launched annually has grown at a cumulative rate of over 50% between 2019 and 2023, while launch costs have fallen tenfold over the past two decades — structural changes that have dramatically lowered barriers to entry for startups and opened new categories of commercial opportunity.

SSV II: Portfolio Strategy and Early Investments

Seraphim Space Ventures II has already made investments in 17 companies across the United States and Europe since launching in 2024. Notable portfolio companies include AscendArc, a small geostationary satellite manufacturer, and Hubble Network, which is developing a satellite constellation to connect Bluetooth-enabled devices at planetary scale.

The fund targets investments at the Seed and Series A stages, focusing on four primary areas. The first is dual-use technology — satellites, sensors, and communications infrastructure that can serve both commercial and defence needs, a category of growing relevance given escalating security concerns in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. The second is satellite data applications powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, where Seraphim sees significant unmet demand across agriculture, climate monitoring, maritime surveillance, and disaster response. The third is in-orbit computing, represented by portfolio companies such as Aethero, which develops edge computing systems designed to enable autonomous decision-making on orbit. The fourth focus area is space-enabled communications, including Hubble Network’s ambition to connect a billion devices through a space-based Bluetooth infrastructure.

Seraphim’s first fund, raised in 2016 with approximately £70 million ($90 million), backed over 100 companies including ICEYE, HawkEye 360, LeoLabs, D-Orbit, and Spire Global — several of which went on to achieve public listings or significant follow-on valuations. SSV II follows the same early-stage strategy while reflecting the evolved commercial and geopolitical landscape the sector now operates in.

One decision can change your entire career. Take that step with our Online courses in ACCA, HESI A2, ATI TEAS 7, HESI EXIT, NCLEX-RN, NCLEX-PN, and Financial Literacy. Join Serrari Ed and start building your brighter future today.

Europe’s Race for Space Sovereignty

The strategic context driving investor interest in SpaceTech has rarely been more acute in Europe. The European Union has faced growing criticism over its dependence on US-based providers — particularly SpaceX — for access to critical space services. In recent years, the bloc was forced to rely on SpaceX rockets to launch its own satellites after the Ariane 5 rocket was retired and before its successor, Ariane 6, became operational.

EU Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius has argued publicly that Europe remains “quite heavily reliant” on key strategic services from the United States and that the continent urgently needs to develop its own space intelligence data systems. In response, the EU is developing the IRIS² project, an €11 billion initiative to create a secure, multi-orbital satellite network for EU governments and businesses, designed as a direct European alternative to Starlink.

In November 2025, the European Space Agency approved a new three-year, €1.35 billion ($1.6 billion) spending plan that, for the first time in the agency’s 50-year history, included funding for an initiative to support space defence programmes across its 23 member states. ESA’s Council of Ministers also allocated €4.4 billion to space transportation, including support for the European Launcher Challenge — an initiative explicitly designed to build a pool of European commercial launch providers capable of competing with SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

Germany approved its first national space strategy in late 2025 as part of a broader push in defence spending, pledging €35 billion by 2030 and increasing its contribution to the ESA budget to more than €5 billion — resulting in ESA’s largest three-year budget ever, of €22 billion, representing a 30% increase on the current allocation. The largest portion of that new budget, €4.4 billion, is earmarked for space transportation programmes targeting parity with SpaceX.

According to a McKinsey analysis of Europe’s space sector, European space spending has grown but has not kept pace with the United States and China, which have invested at an accelerated rate over the past five years. Europe’s share of global orbital launches and satellite deployments has declined progressively over the past decade. In 2024, operational constraints led to just three Ariane launches — an historically low figure that exposed the fragility of European autonomous access to space.

NATO members have also pledged to raise defence budgets to 5% of GDP, according to Space Capital’s Q2 2025 Space IQ report, with the European Commission’s new Competitiveness Fund including specific allocations for resilience, defence, and space, described as “part of a broader push to reduce reliance on the US.”

Key Fund Backers and Their Strategic Interests

The composition of SSV II’s investor base is itself a signal of the sector’s increasingly strategic character. The British Business Bank, a UK government-owned development bank, has been a consistent supporter of deep technology venture investment in the UK. Its participation in SSV II reflects the government’s broader ambition to position Britain as a leading space nation following its exit from EU Horizon Europe research funding.

The National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) is a UK government-backed vehicle specifically designed to invest in technologies that support national security objectives. Its inclusion as an investor underscores the explicit defence and resilience dimension of SSV II’s mandate, particularly in the dual-use technology segment.

Arabsat, the Saudi Arabia-based regional satellite operator serving the Middle East and North Africa, brings a strategic commercial angle. The operator has significant infrastructure in geostationary orbit and an interest in next-generation satellite capabilities relevant to both its own operations and those of its government shareholders.

Eutelsat, which operates Europe’s OneWeb low-Earth-orbit broadband constellation — a direct competitor to Starlink — brings both strategic and financial incentives to back a fund that is investing in the enabling technologies and services that will run on and through LEO infrastructure.

Seraphim’s Ecosystem Role

Seraphim’s model goes beyond conventional venture capital. The firm operates the Seraphim Space Accelerator, which it describes as the world’s first and largest accelerator dedicated to the SpaceTech sector, running programmes across three continents. Accelerator alumni have collectively raised more than $830 million, drawing from a network of over 200 venture capital investors and institutional partners.

The firm also manages the Seraphim Space Investment Trust (SSIT), a publicly listed growth fund on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: SSIT) that provides public market investors with exposure to late-stage SpaceTech companies. SSIT listed in July 2021 with £250 million in gross proceeds. The trust’s largest holding, ICEYE — the Finnish synthetic aperture radar satellite company — became EBITDA profitable in 2024.

Together, the VC funds, accelerator, and listed trust form an integrated lifecycle investment model that allows Seraphim to support companies from pre-seed through to potential public listing — an unusual and differentiated position in the market that has helped the firm build a portfolio spanning 149 companies across 33 countries, including five unicorns, with combined portfolio funding exceeding $13.6 billion.

In December 2025, Seraphim further extended its ecosystem reach with the launch of a SpaceTech Investor Readiness Program in partnership with Space Florida, Florida’s aerospace and finance development authority, aimed at accelerating early-stage Florida-based space startups toward investment readiness and connecting them to Seraphim’s global network.

Outlook

Seraphim’s successful close of SSV II above its target, despite a challenging environment for venture fundraising globally, reflects the structural tailwinds driving capital into SpaceTech: rising defence budgets, the convergence of space and AI, European sovereignty imperatives, and an increasingly data-driven commercial demand for satellite services across agriculture, logistics, climate, and infrastructure.

With over $550 million in assets under management and a portfolio that has already produced several category-defining companies, Seraphim is well-positioned to capitalise on what its CEO calls a “super-exponential” phase of sector growth — one in which, as Musk’s SpaceX-xAI merger powerfully illustrates, the boundary between space infrastructure and artificial intelligence is rapidly dissolving.

Ready to take your career to the next level? Join our Online courses: ACCA, HESI A2, ATI TEAS 7 , HESI EXIT  , NCLEX – RN and NCLEX – PN, Financial Literacy!🌟 Dive into a world of opportunities and empower yourself for success. Explore more at Serrari Ed and start your exciting journey today! ✨

Track GDP, Inflation and Central Bank rates for top African markets with Serrari’s comparator tool.

See today’s Treasury bonds and Money market funds movement across financial service providers in Kenya, using Serrari’s comparator tools.

photo source: Google

By: Montel Kamau

Serrari Financial Analyst

26th February, 2026