(Editor’s note: This post on EnduroSat is part of Dispatches’ Tech Tuesday series. Dispatches covers tech because so many of our highly skilled internationals are scientists and innovators.)
As a teenager, Raycho Raychev wanted to become an astronaut, and his classmates made fun of him. Even after completing several space programs across three continents, nobody took him more seriously. The anecdote Raychev tells most often is about the time an investor he was pitching called security to escort him off the premises. Raychev had just shared his plan to launch a space company in Bulgaria, of all places, and the investor assumed he was crazy.
Every single one of the 40 investors he approached turned him down, yet Raychev was undeterred.
He was convinced Bulgaria had the right assets – skilled people – and he wanted to leverage that. Today, no one dares to mock or doubt him. Raychev is the founder and CEO of EnduroSat – the largest space manufacturer in the Balkans. The company, which specialises in software-defined satellites and space data services, already operates internationally with offices in Toulouse, Berlin, and Denver, and is well known for its collaborations with both private aerospace firms and leading universities.
The company has received millions in both private sector funding and, more recently, government backing. At the tail end of 2025, EnduroSat officially launched an advanced space centre in Sofia, marking another major milestone in its growth.
This satellite manufacturer Is on an investment roll
EnduroSat’s fast growth has been supported by a series of major funding rounds over the last few years. In February 2023, the company raised 20 million euros in a round led by Luxembourg-based private equity firm CEECAT Capital, with participation from existing investors. In May 2025, the company secured a further 43 million euro investment, and on the heels of that, in late 2025, it closed its largest funding to date, raising 90 million euros. That most recent round introduced new investors Riot Ventures, Google Ventures, Lux Capital, Shrug Capital, and the European Innovation Council Fund.
The fact that many of EnduroSat’s investors are North American companies is not random at all. Mr Raychev attributes this to the differences in how investing works in the United States and Europe. Raychev shares that funding from EU firms is tardy and riddled with bureaucratic obstacles, whereas US investors make decisions fast. “The challenge in Europe is the scepticism of the investment world,” he says.
Raychev elaborates on that ecosystem in one of his podcasts by sharing that: “A lot of space companies in Europe only rely on contracts with their space agencies or the European Space Agency.” He believes this to be detrimental to the companies because they only have one customer. Unlike his competitors, Raychev thinks strategically by seeking support everywhere, as is clear from the list of his company’s investors.
Governmental backing for R&D and Innovation followed private funding
As of January this year, EnduroSat’s space centre has also secured strong support from the Bulgarian government. Through a formal Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the Council of Ministers classified the facility’s research and development activities as a priority national investment, establishing a framework for institutional backing. The agreement includes more than 11 million eirps in funding to further upgrade advanced equipment and manufacturing processes needed for the development of EnduroSat’s ESPA-class satellites. This partnership recognises the strategic importance of the centre’s R&D capabilities at a national level.
Raychev is highly pragmatic and makes it clear that he doesn’t like to brag about the number of rounds or even the sum of investments his company has received. He prefers to focus on the results achieved with the funds coming in, or what he calls “the quality of products created with the investors’ money.”
Innovation is at the heart of EnduroSat’s approach
The company’s newly opened space centre in Sofia plays a crucial role in achieving that. Spanning 188,340 square feet, the centre was designed from the ground up. It is equipped with cutting-edge RF laboratories, mechanical and hardware labs, ISO-certified clean rooms, and full space qualification infrastructure. These facilities enable production, R&D, space services, and mission operations – all under one roof.
In an interview for a Bulgarian podcast, Raychev points out that EnduroSat is one of a few full-stack space companies.
Everything the company builds is created internally – code, operating systems, circuit boards or hardware components.
The space centre enhances EnduroSat’s ability to manufacture satellites faster, at scale, with greater cost efficiency and with high manufacturing quality. That translates into the production of up to two Gen3 ESPA-class satellites, each weighing between 200 and 500 kilograms. The satellites’ modular design allows the manufacturer to assemble and test them in hours instead of months, and at much lower costs than competitors. This, in its turn, dramatically reduces time-to-orbit for commercial and governmental constellation operators worldwide.
EnduroSat has a clear vision for the future of space
and humanity
Slashing the astronomical costs for owning and operating satellite tech is at the heart of everything EnduroSat does. The company achieves that through a range of innovative solutions. For example, the brand’s mass-made software-first satellites feature an operating system that can be upgraded while in orbit – something that was unthinkable in the past when satellites had fixed software. Digital, cloud-based mission control and ground control stations are some of the other innovative offers available to clients at a fixed cost.
Raychev is deeply pragmatic but also extremely passionate about his company and space tech as a whole. He notes that there are lots of brands and engineers building for the sake of engineering, not for the sake of creating a product that can be connected to life on Earth. Unlike them, he wants to bridge the gap between the space industry and non-space business “in a visceral, value-added way.”
According to Raychev, AI is so overhyped that all models will become a commodity soon, but he expects space data to become extremely valuable for training the models and sees that data as “the golden goose.” He envisions a future when space sensors will be deployed at a global scale for tasks such as intelligence purposes, environmental monitoring and business logistics, to name but a few. This is where his company comes in with its mission for manufacturing affordable space tech at scale.
“What would happen if space data became available to small and medium-sized enterprises?” is the question that’s central to Raychev’s vision. It’s a question that’s at the core of EnduroSat’s mission, too. The company plans to make space data “universally accessible and instantly available” so that everyone can benefit from it.
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Teodora Gaydarova
For 15 years Teodora Gaydarova has been covering culture, travel, hospitality and other beats for different publications and global brands. A Bulgarian by birth, she has lived all over the United Kingdom and parts of Spain, and she writes about the experience of navigating life across different countries and cultures on her blog, The Local Insider.
