Austria may be best known for its history, as the home of Mozart, Strauss, and the Habsburg dynasty, but the country’s space industry is in the midst of a renaissance of its own.
Like many of its neighbors, Austria has spent recent months signaling its increasing commitment to achieving bold national space ambitions.
- At the ESA Council of Ministers in November, Austria upped its contribution to the agency by 48%—from €227M in 2022 to €336M.
- Austria has also hopped on the sovereignty train, commissioning its first military sat this month.
Beyond these large institutional announcements, however, Austria has spent recent years fostering its space startup landscape. In 2024, ESA opened a Phi-Lab in Vienna, which is a space hub aiming to commercialize startups. The lab has already churned out some promising leads, including:
- GATE Space, which won the prime contract in March for Austria’s first military sat.
- R-Space, which is building tech to help others test payloads in-orbit, which is launching its first mission on an Isar Aerospace flight later this year.
Payload caught up with half a dozen space startup founders in the country to hear what Austria is doing right—and wrong—on its pathway to prominence.
Vienna can’t wait: Austria has a lot going for it: choice educational institutions, an amazing quality of life, and a socioeconomic landscape that supports early-stage ventures.
“It’s a small country, yes, but it has quite a strong public funding ecosystem—I think one of the best in Europe,” said Maya Pindeus, cofounder of Another Earth, a Vienna-based startup building a simulated Earth model based on EO data. “It’s definitely one of the best with non-dilutive funding.”
For early-stage space companies in Austria, there’s no shortage of publicly funded assistance and facilities to get off the ground. Companies have an abundance of resources to grow and demonstrate early technological wins through Phi-Lab, accelerators like accent Inkubator, and research facilities at academic institutions..
Lilly Eichinger, CEO of Satellives—a startup aiming to become Austria’s first satellite manufacturer—told Payload that these programs have opened access to low-cost testing facilities. She added that CNC machining capabilities even helped the company develop its first prototype, expected to be completed in 2027.
Stunted growth: Once Austrian companies reach a certain stage, however, the local institutional support seems to run out.
“There’s some kind of glass ceiling, or maybe more robust ceiling, for startups to grow in Austria,” Florian Schirg, a senior consultant at Phi-Lab, told Payload.
Put simply, Austrian startups are given all the tools to get started, but find very few local options to fund their growth once they need private capital.
Julian Rothenbuchner, founder of Tumbleweed—a startup building a platform to test new innovations in orbit—told Payload that the issue is due to VC risk appetites in Austria. The country’s funders prefer backing startups at later stages, and in longer-standing industries.
“To be in venture capital, you have to believe that exceptional things can happen, and that runs counter to Austrian culture,” Rothenbuchner said.
Pan Europa: Luckily for Austrian space founders, international investors seem increasingly eager to invest across borders—and Austria has a long history of cross-country collaboration.
- This month, Enpulsion raised €22.5M in a round led by German investment firm Nordwind Growth.
- Last week, Another Earth raised €3.5M in a round led by Irish VC firm WakeUp Capital.
“We’re kind of a multicultural hotpot of Europe where the different cultural influences—Slavic languages, and Germanic languages, and Romance languages—have found some kind of mixture,” Schirg told Payload. “Deal[ing] with multicultural settings and intercultural communication in complex projects—such as space tech—is something extremely valuable.”
While the rest of Europe makes grand investments to build sovereign end-to-end space capabilities, Austria is positioning itself as a valued partner and Tier 1 supplier to the rest of Europe—and the world.
The thinking, at least among some founders, is that absolute end-to-end space sovereignty is unachievable, and ultimately bad for business.
“We should never think in terms of closed borders. That makes no sense from any market perspective,” said Enpulsion CEO Alexander Reissner. “[We] are already discussing and looking at, you know, potential partners across all of Europe and beyond. There’s absolutely no reason in being nationalistic.”
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