ICEYE: Greece’s HIIF invests €35 million, and the company plans a factory in Greece for up to 150 satellites a year

Greece is moving from the role of customer to that of shareholder. The Hellenic Innovation and Infrastructure Fund (HIIF), which invests on behalf of the National Development Fund in the new economy, made its first investment: €35 million in Finland’s ICEYE, the company that builds synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites. The company plans to set up in Greece a facility able to produce up to 150 satellites a year, the largest it will have in Europe.

The investment was presented on Wednesday, November 11 at HIIF’s offices in the presence of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. He spoke of a “big leap” for the country and called it the best answer to critics that Greece’s production model is changing radically. He stressed that the stake has both a strategic and a financial aim, as the state expects significant returns, and that Greek satellites in orbit already provide images and data for national defence, civil protection and mapping.

Shares in a €1 billion round

The deal was signed on September 30 and the transaction completed in October. HIIF acquired preferred shares through the Series F funding round, which raised €485 million of new capital and, together with secondary share sales, exceeded €1 billion. General Atlantic, EQT through the Commission-backed Scaleup Europe Fund, the Qatar Investment Authority and the Finnish state funds Solidium and Tesi also took part. ICEYE’s share register already includes BlackRock, General Catalyst and Draper, as well as France’s Bpifrance and Poland’s BGK, two state investment bodies.

Over 250 jobs and satellites “made in Greece”

The Greek facility will cover the whole cycle of assembly, integration and testing (AIT) and the manufacture of subsystems, with research and development activity. ICEYE sees it as a hub for South-East Europe and estimates that at full operation it will employ over 250 skilled workers by 2028.

“In less than two years our team in Athens has proven that Greece can build world-class satellites,” said Rafał Modrzewski, ICEYE co-founder and chief executive. He recalled that Greece was first a customer, through the National Microsatellite Programme, and now acquires a stake in the company, while the new plant “will help Europe see with its own eyes”.

ICEYE’s SAR satellites collect images regardless of weather and lighting, day and night, through cloud and smoke. For defence this means surveillance of sea and land borders and monitoring of critical infrastructure, while the same data can be used for early response to fires and floods. ICEYE built Greece’s first SAR satellites, which are already in orbit.

The next step, as described by Minister of Digital Governance Dimitris Papastergiou, is “HELLAS-SPACE 2.0”. By the end of November, tenders are expected for optical and thermal satellites that will belong to the Greek state and will watch seas and borders, monitor the environment and detect fire outbreaks even at night. The goal for December is tenders for microsatellites that detect radio signals, also useful for ships sailing with their identification systems off, for monitoring space hazards and for technologies for servicing satellites in orbit.