Europe’s push for self-reliant space defense now has fresh money behind it. Neuraspace, a Portuguese space traffic management firm, said Aug. 5 it closed 15.6 million euros, roughly $18M, to scale its orbital awareness business for civil agencies and militaries alike.
The round pairs a six million euro Series B from Lince Capital, Explorer Investments and Armilar Venture Partners with 9.6 million euros from Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience Plan, an EU-backed fund. The public portion is earmarked for NeuraspaceDEF, an AI-driven platform that merges public catalogs, ground-based telescope feeds and the firm’s own optical sensors into near-real-time tracking.
For defense users the platform layers behavioral anomaly spotting, threat grading and autonomous decision support on top of standard collision alerts and maneuver guidance. The company counts more than 600 satellites under its watch, operated by customers that include Spire Global and the European Space Agency. Sales grew more than 350% in the last year, a jump it ties to crowding in low Earth orbit.
Chief executive Chiara Manfletti said the founding mission of safer space has broadened into deliberate threat defense, pointing to cyberattacks, radio-frequency and navigation interference, and increasingly capable counterspace programs as the new operational reality. She argues accidental risk and intentional attack can no longer be managed separately.
Part of the capital will add radar sensing to Neuraspace’s optical telescope network. The company has raised about 29 million euros since 2020, sits in NATO’s DIANA defense accelerator cohort, hosts a telescope at Portugal’s Beja Air Base and says a European defense ministry has chosen it as prime contractor, with an announcement slated for September.
