Space Mobility Company No Space The latest funding round has raised €3.9 million. Combined with previous investments, this latest round brings IENAI’s total funding to €7 million.
The company plans to begin commercial deliveries of its thrusters by early 2025.
The company has secured a number of Spanish investors, including Inveready, WA4STEAM, DPM, GED Conexo Ventures and CDTI, a government-backed investor that will match private investment.
The increase comes following the achievement of a product milestone: IENAI’s electric propulsion system “ATHENA” (Adaptable Thruster based on Electrospray powered by Nanotechnology), a 0.5U thruster built for satellites weighing 3kg to 50kg, successfully ignited for almost 400 hours, the longest ignition record for an ionic liquid electrospray thruster in Europe (independently verified by ESA). The ignition tests were part of a successful Preliminary Design Review (PDR) with ESA.
The second was a beta test of the space mobility and mission analysis and design software tool 360, with the participation of around 30 companies. The company is now partnering with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as part of the IRIS Programme, which engages start-ups from various incubation and acceleration programmes across Europe.
With the investment, the company plans to accelerate commercialization of its propulsion systems, expand its customer base for its software tools and open a new facility to accommodate its growing team.
IENAI also plans to hire additional staff this year, with the goal of increasing its workforce from 22 to 30 across all departmental roles. To further advance scientific and technological development, two new doctoral students will join the seven current doctoral candidates mentored by six full-time doctoral staff.
The next step towards commercial production of IENA is the in-orbit demonstration of the ATHENA propulsion system onboard the Cassini In-Orbit Demonstration (IOD) and In-Orbit Validation (IOV) missions, developed under the European Space Agency in collaboration with ISISPACE. Cassini is part of an activity funded by Horizon Europe to strengthen the competitiveness of the EU space industry through several new technology experiments by different providers across Europe for demonstration in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
Dr. Daniel Pérez Grande, CEO and co-founder of IENAI Space, commented: “This funding is a fantastic achievement and a testament to the incredible efforts our team puts in every day. It allows us to solidify the next steps towards commercializing our flagship product, thereby significantly growing our business. We can’t wait to deliver our electric propulsion system, ATHENA, to our customers, which offers world-class efficiency, compactness and customization options to address a wide range of space missions.”
“We are also very excited about the future of IENAI. In 2024 and 2025, we plan to start a number of important collaborations with leading companies in the market and advance current ESA projects. We also plan to continue maturing and validating our propulsion technologies and start developing more novel products for the space mobility market.”
To this end, the company plans to expand its current manufacturing and testing facilities across Europe, including cleanroom facilities already installed in Madrid, Barcelona (Spain) and Uppsala (Sweden) through agreements with CNM-CSIC (Barcelona Microelectronics Institute) and Uppsala University.
