LOS ANGELES – Ramon.Space has raised $26 million from Ingrasys, a subsidiary of Foxconn Technology Group, the Abu Dhabi-based Strategic Development Fund and other investors.
Grove Ventures, Deep Insight and UMC Capital, firms that have invested in Ramon.Space in the past, contributed additional funding.
With the latest investment, Ramon.Space will expand production of computing technology designed to withstand the extreme temperatures, radiation, data transfer delays, and the size and power constraints of spaceflight.
High-Volume Production
Facing growing demand, Ramon.Space has been looking in recent years for ways to build space computing infrastructure the way computing infrastructure is built for terrestrial markets: “high volume, high quality and high capacity,” Ramon.Space CEO Avi Shabtai told SpaceNews.
“We were looking into finding a strategic partner who was interested in space as much as we were, and we found that to be Foxconn in Taiwan and Ingrasys, a subsidiary of Foxconn in charge of manufacturing,” Shabtai said.
Under the partnership announced June 20, Ramon.Space will develop and manufacture space computing products. Ingrasys will establish high-volume production, Shabtai said.
Growing Demand
The ability to manufacture radiation-resilient computing systems in high volume and in a cost-effective way will drive the expansion of the space computing market, Shabtai said.
Increasingly, communications satellites are based on computing infrastructure rather than hardware tailor-made for a specific mission.
“You can look at the communication satellites of tomorrow as computing systems that are implementing a satellite connectivity system,” Shabtai said. “The transition towards software-based computing systems will dominate all the next-generation communication, Earth-observation and, later on, data-centric satellites,” Shabtai said.
Ingrasys CEO Benjamin Ting said in a statement, “Space computing is the foundation to leverage the infinite potential of space. We recognized that investing and partnering to manufacture Ramon.Space products was the perfect strategic move as they are the leader in this field.”
Mohamed Musabah Al Mazrouei, Strategic Development Fund director of investments and portfolio management, said in a statement, “Our decision to invest in Ramon.Space is in perfect alignment with our strategic mandate, which emphasizes a focus on the space sector through private equity and venture capital. This venture capital investment not only enhances our portfolio, but also opens up potential avenues to seek synergies and foster partnerships, both within the UAE and globally.”
