Gama, the French company building ultra-light deployable solar arrays for satellites, today announced €15 million in Seed funding from Transition, Planet A, Draper Associates, and Manta Ray.
Power is becoming the bottleneck in orbit. Direct-to-device networks, broadband constellations and orbital data centres need far more electrical power per satellite than previous generations. Every watt comes from solar array surface area, and all of that area has to fold into a rocket fairing for launch.
Gama's deployable solar array Wing packs very large arrays into a small stowed volume. Designed for simplicity and scale production, it aims to achieve an industry-leading cost per watt. Wing is designed as a complete power system: solar generation, sun-tracking array rotation, power management and optional energy storage, all in one integrated unit.
Gama also supplies the control algorithms that keep a satellite stable with such a large array attached, to run on the customer's flight computer. Supply has not kept pace with that demand.
Most satellite makers still rely on specialised III-V solar cells, made in small volumes by a handful of suppliers, with lead times of a year or more. Gama instead takes high-volume terrestrial silicon cells, the kind made by the billion for rooftops, and makes them ready for space to break the cell supply and cost bottleneck.
Because Gama develops both the deployable hardware and the software that controls these very large surfaces in orbit, the Wing architecture is designed to scale to much higher power levels as satellites grow.
"For years the hard part of space was getting there. Launch has become dramatically cheaper, unlocking vast new applications, and the constraint has moved to power," said Andrew Nutter, CEO and cofounder of Gama.
"The next generation of satellites needs far more of it, and every array still has to fit inside a fairing. Wing is built to solve that problem at volume.
Demand from constellation builders is arriving faster than we planned, so we have brought forward our investment in production capacity. This round lets us build the line and the team to deliver it on an aggressive schedule."
Gama targets six-month lead times for Wing once its production line is running, with lead times dropping further as volumes grow.
In September 2026, Gama and Eclipse Space, a provider of customer-owned satellite constellations founded by former SpaceX Starlink engineers, announced a partnership under which Gama will supply deployable solar arrays as the power layer for Eclipse's satellite platforms.
Gama will deliver its first demonstration unit in summer 2027.
Gama's engineering team is led by CTO Daniel Chapman and VP of Engineering Duncan Adams, both of whom built Starlink hardware and production lines at SpaceX.
The new funding will be used to:
- Bring forward investment in Gama's first Wing production line in Ivry-sur-Seine, to meet customer demand
- Expand in-house development, functional and environmental testing capabilities
- Recruit around 60 exceptional engineers across mechanical, power electronics, software, production and test
"At SpaceX we learned that building one great piece of hardware is not the hard part. Building thousands is," said Daniel Chapman, CTO of Gama.
"We started with a blank sheet and designed Wing from first principles to be fast, easy and cost-effective to manufacture.
And because we build both the hardware and the software that controls these large structures, the same architecture scales to much higher power levels as satellites continue to grow ever larger in size and capability, to keep pace with ever-increasing demand for connectivity and other orbital services.
Now we are hiring the engineers who want to build that factory with us and continue on to the larger deployable products on the roadmap."
"Energy in orbit is becoming critical infrastructure, and the way it is produced matters," said Nick de la Forge, Co-founder and GP at Planet A.
"Gama's lighter arrays mean less launch mass and less material for every watt in orbit, and they are built efficiently at volume. What sets the team apart is its culture: humble and hungry, SpaceX-style ambition and speed, combined with the depth of French engineering.
Engineers design, build and test under one roof, so a new idea becomes tested hardware in days or even hours."
"Europe needs companies that can build strategic space hardware at industrial scale," said Ari Helgason, Co-founder and GP at Transition.
"Gama's leadership has done this before.That experience is why they have reached a customer partnership with constellation builders so quickly, and why we are backing them to become the reference supplier of power for the new space economy."
Lead image: Andrew Nutter, CEO, and Daniel Chapman, CTO.
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