Munich-based space startup deltaVision has raised €10.2 million in its first outside funding round, money earmarked for scaling production of the valves, pumps and pressure regulators that shuttle propellant around spacecraft.
The company also wants to help build one of the industry’s more speculative markets, in-orbit refuelling, in which satellites are topped up with fuel while still flying rather than retired the moment their tanks run dry.
The round drew backing from Futury Capital, KT Ventures and Valemount Capital, with tech.eu reporting that KT Ventures and Valemount Capital led.
It arrives as a fresh wave of Europe’s spacetech startups chases the in-orbit servicing opportunity that has, until recently, been dominated by a handful of American players.
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Orbital refuelling is simple in principle and stubborn in practice. Most satellites launch with a fixed load of propellant, and once it is spent they are either boosted into a graveyard orbit or left to drift, even when their electronics are still working perfectly.
Docking two vehicles precisely enough to transfer volatile fluids, in a vacuum and at orbital speeds, is the hard part that has kept the idea mostly on paper.
A refuelling architecture rewrites that arithmetic. It would let operators extend a satellite’s working life, reposition it, or keep it holding station for years longer, turning a disposable asset into one that can be serviced.
That logic feeds a broader “in-space economy” thesis, in which servicing vehicles, fuel depots and orbital tugs form a reusable infrastructure layer rather than a string of one-shot missions.
Each satellite kept alive is revenue that does not have to be re-launched, and each launch avoided is mass that does not have to reach orbit in the first place.
That is the pitch investors have been buying into across the servicing sector for several years, so far with more prototypes than paying missions.
DeltaVision does not plan to fly the refuelling missions itself. Its focus is components: fluidic couplers, utility interfaces and integrated refuelling modules that let two spacecraft dock and pass fluid between them, alongside the valves and regulators it already supplies for launchers, satellites and landers.
Rival European ventures are attacking adjacent parts of the same puzzle, from green propulsion to debris removal.
Chief executive and co-founder Alex Plebuch has framed deltaVision’s plan around scaling output and supporting an “open and interoperable” servicing ecosystem, rather than a closed proprietary standard.
The company says it works with more than 60 customers across four continents, a figure drawn from tech.eu’s report and not independently confirmed.
Its named programmes include the European Space Agency’s Argonaut lunar lander, for which deltaVision says it is supplying roughly 50 products, though that detail also rests largely on the company’s own account.
There is at least one external marker of commercial traction. Under an April 2026 agreement, US firm Mott Corp began offering deltaVision’s valve solutions for spacecraft propulsion flow control, a partnership announced independently of this funding round.
Next comes manufacturing. DeltaVision has said it wants to scale to around 5,000 valves a year, establish a French subsidiary, and stand up valve production in the United States, moves that would give it a foothold on both sides of the Atlantic and closer to key launch customers.
The wider backdrop helps explain the investor interest. Europe has spent the past two years trying to cut its reliance on SpaceX and build sovereign launch and servicing capacity, and component suppliers like deltaVision sit upstream of nearly every mission that ambition depends on.
For now, though, the refuelling market remains largely a promise. Corroboration beyond tech.eu and the company’s own materials is thin, with SpaceWatch.GLOBAL confirming the €10.2 million round and its investors but little else.
The near-term story is less about topping up satellites in orbit than about a supplier betting that the plumbing of the in-space economy is where the early money will be made.
