PAVE Space, a Swiss company developing orbital transfer vehicles, announced on 25 March 2026 that it had raised $40m in a seed round led by Visionaries Club and Creandum.
Lombard Odier Investment Managers, Atlantic Labs, Sistafund, b2venture, ACE Investment Partners, Ilavaska Vuillermoz Capital and Pareto & Motier Ventures also took part. Atlantic Labs said it had backed the founders from the start. The Next Web described the round as one of the largest seed rounds in European space history.
The company did not disclose a valuation.
“The space economy is entering an industrial phase where logistics will become as critical in orbit as they are on Earth.”Julie Böhning, CEO and Co-founder, PAVE Space
What PAVE Space does
Most rockets drop satellites in low Earth orbit. Satellites bound for higher orbits then use their own electric propulsion to climb slowly to their working position, which can take six to twelve months. PAVE Space is building vehicles that would carry them to geostationary orbit, medium Earth orbit or lunar trajectories in under 24 hours.
Its main vehicle is a heavy kick stage that runs on storable bipropellants rather than cryogenic fuels, which avoids the problem of propellant boiling off. A smaller mobile platform is being developed for repositioning satellites and for dual-use missions. The company says its vehicles are designed to fly on several launchers, including SpaceX's Falcon 9, Ariane 6 and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries rockets. Target customers include satellite operators, telecom providers and defence organisations, Tech.eu reported.
Founders and progress so far
PAVE Space was founded in 2024 by chief executive Julie Böhning and Jérémy Marciacq. The Next Web, which also named Simon Both as a co-founder, reported that the three started the Gruyère Space Program at EPFL in 2018. That student project built a reusable rocket demonstrator called Colibri, which completed 53 test flights in 2024 on a budget of about CHF 250,000 (about $280,000 at the time).
Pulse 2.0 lists the company in Lausanne, while The Next Web said it was founded in nearby Renens.
According to Atlantic Labs, the team built and tested its first propulsion system within four months, converted a former Alpine power plant into an engine test site and signed eight reservation agreements with satellite operators. The first in-orbit demonstration is planned for October 2026.
What the money is for
PAVE Space said it would use the money to develop the heavy kick stage, run propulsion ground firings, carry out its first in-orbit demonstration, grow its engineering and operations teams and prepare its first commercial missions.
Böhning said the space economy was entering an industrial phase in which logistics in orbit would matter as much as logistics on Earth, and that the company wanted Europe to keep sovereign capabilities in the area. Marton Sarkadi Nagy, a partner at Visionaries Club, said that getting to space had become routine, but moving once there had not.
Atlantic Labs argued that Europe lacks an independent logistics layer in orbit even as governments spend heavily on sovereign space and defence capabilities, and said PAVE's ability to fly on several launchers would give European operators a way to move satellites that is not tied to a single rocket.
Company website: pave.space