Cailabs, a French company based in Rennes, Brittany, has established itself as a leading manufacturer of optical ground stations and industrial lasers. It specializes in bi-directional communication technology that enables high-speed, secure data transfer between satellites and ground stations.
The company joined the EIC Scaling Club in October 2024 and is part of the New Space market group. At the Scale 100 Forum in Athens, we spoke to Cailabs’ Head of Corporate Development, Maxime Lemiere.
Listen to the interview here or watch it below the article!
Cailabs’ innovative solution is becoming increasingly crucial as the satellite industry faces unprecedented growth, with some projections indicating an increase from the current 10,000 satellites to approximately 30,000 by 2030.
As a result, there is a significant shortage of available spectrum and frequencies, making it challenging for new satellite operators to secure the necessary frequencies for satellite communication. Additionally, the security question has become more acute – the geopolitical landscape has evolved in recent years, leading to increased incidents of signal interference in various conflict zones worldwide.
“We need to find solutions against all these problems [..] – more satellites, lack of spectrum, as well as security issues. And the optical ground stations are the solution,” Maxime argues.
Traditional radio-based communication technologies rely on a limited spectrum and offer relatively low data transfer rates. Cailabs’ solution – optical ground stations that leverage field-programming – enables secure communication with data transfer rates of up to 100 Gbps. This allows operators to transmit larger volumes of data between satellites and the Earth while ensuring robust security.
“[Our] secret sauce is really about mitigating the turbulence when you send a signal from a satellite to the Earth, or [the other way around].” Meaning, the atmosphere's motion can distort and weaken the signal, but Cailabs’ technology reduces these effects.
The company was founded in 2013 with the vision of "shaping the light" – a focus on maximising information transmission through laser technology. Under the leadership of CEO and co-founder Jean-François Morizur, Cailabs currently employs 120 professionals across France and the US.
Over the years, the team has faced several challenges. For example, the company had to invest considerable effort in educating potential customers and demonstrating the viability of their technology.
At the same time, the team has celebrated several significant milestones too. To name one: In the summer of 2024, Cailabs, in collaboration with the French Defense Innovation Agency and Unseenlabs, successfully demonstrated a stable link between a satellite and Earth. That was a world-first achievement of this kind.
Additionally, the company has begun shipping its equipment to customers, marking a crucial operational milestone. “The team keeps working hard to [..] ensure that we can deliver all the optical ground stations that we have on contracts.”
To date, Cailabs has raised €50 million in investment, including backing from the European Innovation Council (EIC). Thus, Maxime said that joining the EIC Scaling Club was a no-brainer for them.
“The value that EIC has brought to us during our board meetings [and] day-to-day activities is tremendous in terms of networking of opportunities, in terms of business mindset… That's something that we really value with EIC, and we see the [EIC] Scaling Club as one more opportunity [to work] with EIC.”
Asked what the team is particularly expecting from their membership, Maxime says – exchange of industry insights and knowledge.
Watch the full video interview here or visit our YouTube channel (and enjoy our other videos while you're there!).
The EIC Scaling Club is a curated community where 120+ European deep tech scale-ups with the potential to build world-class businesses and solve major global challenges come together with investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders to spur growth.
The top 120+ European deep tech companies will be carefully selected from a pool of high-growth scale-ups that have benefitted from EIC financial schemes, other European and national innovation programmes, and beyond.
The EIC Scaling Club is an EIC-funded initiative run in partnership by Tech Tour, Bpifrance (EuroQuity), Hello Tomorrow, Tech.eu (Webrazzi), EurA and IESE Business School.
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