Foundational secures £8.2M pre-seed as it emerges from stealth

London-based space technology firm Foundational has emerged from stealth mode, securing £8.2 million in pre-seed funding to bolster its satellite positioning infrastructure and advance its data platform. The investment comes from a consortium of investors, including Inflection, BACKED, Final Frontier, Adjacent, and Type One Ventures.

Founded in 2025 by Hira Virdee and Dave Gooding, Foundational specializes in creating technology to gather, process, and disseminate precise positioning data for satellites. This data finds applications in navigation, Earth observation, surveying, as well as maritime and aviation sectors.

The company's primary focus is on automating and scaling Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR), a technique used to ascertain the position of satellites and other objects in orbit. SLR functions by directing laser pulses from a ground station towards a retroreflector installed on a satellite, and calculating the time taken for the light to return, which enables millimetre-level ranging accuracy.

Foundational integrates satellite-mounted retroreflectors, automated ground-based laser stations, and a software platform that processes and delivers the obtained data, aiming to transform SLR into a commercially scalable service.

The technology underpinning Foundational's offerings is built upon laser-ranging systems initially developed at Lumi Space, a venture co-founded by Virdee in 2018 with backing from the European Space Agency and the UK Space Agency. Foundational was established to transition this research and development into a commercial venture.

Its clientele comprises operators of low Earth orbit satellite constellations, the European Space Agency, UK government entities, aerospace manufacturers, research institutions, and enterprises developing commercial space technologies.

With the escalating number of satellites and debris in low Earth orbit, satellite operators require increasingly accurate information regarding the location of objects and alterations in their trajectories. Data generated through SLR can aid applications like space traffic control, resilient navigation, and Earth observation. SLR is the gold standard, offering the most precise measurement tools ever created by humanity, capable of pinpointing a satellite to within millimetres.

However, it has been too expensive and complex to employ on a large scale until now. By consolidating the hardware, ground network, and data platform into a single entity, Foundational is essentially rebuilding a crucial component of space infrastructure for the commercial era, according to Hira Virdee, CEO and co-founder of the company.

The funding will be utilized to expand its ground-station network, vertically integrate the manufacture of its space-based hardware, augment production of its retroreflector products, and further enhance its data platform. Ultimately, Foundational intends to establish a global network that provides positioning data to satellite operators, insurers, and governments.