Bright Ascension Ltd., an industry leading space software technology provider, is pleased to announce that it has successfully completed a fund raising round and secured financing commitments through private investments to support further expansion and development of its product offering. The company has raised UK£1m of additional
equity through the issue of new shares to match development funding that has been awarded to Bright Ascension by the European Space Agency (ESA).
Bright Ascension will use the new funds for the development of next generation satellite software infrastructure, which will offer its customers a complete end to end software solution for space based service provision. This expansion stage closely correlates to the company’s participation in ESA ARTES Pioneer programme, a multi year project set to design and develop a cutting edge end to end solution which will enable a wide range of companies to create innovative satellite constellation services at a significantly reduced cost and within a reduced timeframe.
The majority investor, Capital for Colleagues (C4C), the investment vehicle focused on opportunities in the Employee Owned Business sector, have not only been Bright Ascension’s long standing partner since 2016, but also aided the company in re organising and adopting the employee ownership model. This new and fairer structure enabled Bright Ascension to build a world class organisation in order to attract, retain, motivate and harness the best talent in the field, which will play a crucial role in achieving its growth goals.
Scottish Enterprise also becomes a shareholder having invested in Bright Ascension through its Early Stage Growth Challenge Fund.
“We are delighted to report this significant new investment into Bright Ascension, which will enhance its ability to deliver cutting edge solutions for its clients and gives us great confidence for its future,” said Alistair Currie, Chief Executive of Capital for Colleagues. “The post investment valuation of Bright Ascension represents a further material uplift in the value of our investment, and further validates our strategy focused on Employee Owned Businesses.”
“We are very excited to have secured this additional funding that will allow us to continue our ESA project work and will safeguard our existing roadmap and end to end product suite development for a stronger place in the industry,” said Peter Mendham, CEO at Bright Ascension. “C4C has been a very supportive partner for Bright Ascension since the initial investment in 2016 and has helped us to establish a robust employee ownership culture in the business.”