{"id":421951,"date":"2026-02-12T15:13:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T15:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/421951\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T15:13:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T15:13:11","slug":"early-spacex-backer-funds-uk-satellite-data-start-up-money-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/421951\/","title":{"rendered":"Early SpaceX backer funds UK satellite data start-up | Money News"},"content":{"rendered":"

A satellite data start-up which shrinks file sizes in order to transmit larger quantities of information has won backing from an early investor in SpaceX, Elon Musk\u2019s rocket-making behemoth.<\/p>\n

Sky News understands that The Compression Company will on Friday announce a $3.4m (\u00a32.5m) fundraising led by Long Journey, which has backed some of the world’s biggest technology businesses, including SpaceX<\/a>, Uber and Anduril.<\/p>\n

The Compression Company uses AI-driven compression which runs onboard satellites in order to reduce file sizes by more than 95%, which it says unlocks one of the principal bottlenecks in the delivery of useful data back to Earth.<\/p>\n

The volume of data being generated in space is growing at a rapid rate, and is used in areas ranging from climate monitoring and disaster responses to defence, agriculture and logistics.<\/p>\n

Money latest: Chain crowned nation’s favourite supermarket for fifth time<\/a><\/p>\n

More than 5,000 Earth observation (EO) satellites are expected to be launched over the next decade, almost three times the number seen in the previous decade.<\/p>\n

Satellites operate with limited bandwidth and only have a short window to transmit data on each pass of a ground station able to receive data.<\/p>\n

Research suggests that just 2% of the data recorded by satellites is transmitted back to Earth, with the rest, delayed, degraded or discarded.<\/p>\n

The Compression Company has developed technology enabling bandwidth to be preserved for the highest-value data.<\/p>\n

“There have been huge investments in capturing more data from space, but far less attention paid to how that data actually gets back to Earth,” Michael Stanway, co-founder and chief executive of The Compression Company, said.<\/p>\n

“Until now, the answer has been to launch more satellites.<\/p>\n

“We are taking a different approach – using software to compress data in orbit, so operators can bring down more useful information from existing satellites and unlock more value from the data they’re already capturing.”<\/p>\n

Mr Stanway and co-founder Joe Griffith, The Compression Company’s chief technology officer, met while studying neurotechnology at Imperial College London.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The business, founded last year, was initially backed by Entrepreneurs First, the prominent international talent investor, before closing the new round of funding.<\/p>\n

“Space has become a data industry, but the ability to move and work with that data has lagged badly behind its generation,” Lee Jacobs, managing partner and founder, Long Journey, said.<\/p>\n

“The Compression Company is tackling one of the most fundamental constraints in the ecosystem with a software-first approach that’s both technically ambitious and immediately useful to operators.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A satellite data start-up which shrinks file sizes in order to transmit larger quantities of information has won…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-421951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}