EnduroSat, a Sofia-based satellite maker, has raised $205m — the biggest funding round ever for a Bulgarian company. The deal values it at more than $1bn, making it Bulgaria's second tech unicorn after fintech platform Payhawk, which hit that mark in 2022 and remains the country's only other unicorn.

Investor Aileen Lee coined the term "unicorn" in 2013 for startups worth more than $1bn. Back then only 39 such companies existed worldwide — rare enough to earn the name of the mythical animal. The valuation isn't cash in the bank. It's what investors paid for a stake in the latest funding round, and it only holds as long as EnduroSat stays private, off the stock market.

From a 25-sq-metre attic in 2015 to 103 satellites in orbit

Raycho Raychev founded EnduroSat in Sofia in 2015, working out of a 25-sq-metre attic with a team of five. In May 2018 the company launched its first CubeSat — a small satellite weighing just a few kilograms, and the first Bulgarian-built craft ever to reach orbit. Since then it has moved from one-off projects to building whole fleets of satellites. It has now put 103 satellites into orbit, delivered more than 200 spacecraft for various missions, and works with over 450 clients worldwide. The new funding comes just months after two earlier rounds: €43m in May 2025 and $104m that autumn, taking its total haul past $400m in a year and a half. US funds Riot Ventures and Atreides Management led the round, with Google Ventures, Founders Fund, Lux Capital and the European Innovation Council's fund also taking part.

Assembly-line production and a new plant in the US

Most of the money will go into production. EnduroSat builds satellites on an assembly line, more like drones than one-off custom builds. The company says one technician can assemble and test a finished satellite in 6 to 8 hours; a comparable craft takes SpaceX around 90 days and a team of four. EnduroSat now turns out a new satellite every three days and aims to reach two a day. The new US plant will produce large volumes for American civilian and military orders. Near Sofia, on the site of the old Dobroslavtsi military airfield, the company is building what Raychev calls one of the biggest space and defence hubs in Europe. It will include a facility to assemble, test and check the quality of new generations of satellites, plus a research and education centre, and the airfield's runway will be rebuilt and extended. The first phase will take three years. Raychev and co-founder Petar Mitev bought the company's current production centre in Sofia in 2024; it opened officially in October 2025 and covers more than 17,000 sq metres.

Nearly 400 staff and labs in Varna and Sofia

EnduroSat employs close to 400 people across seven sites. The company says its wider network of partners and suppliers takes the total number of people working in space technology in Bulgaria past 1,000. Bulgaria still has few engineers in this field, so EnduroSat opened a lab at the Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy in Varna — said to be the country's biggest space research facility — and a second one at Sofia University. From October, a master's programme taught in English will run across three universities to draw in foreign students too. For 2023, the last year with full financial results published, EnduroSat reported revenue of 27.1m levs and profit of 1.7m levs. The company says profit margins in the space industry run several times higher than the 2-4% typical in the car industry.

The first big order off the new production line is a contract to build 24 standardised Earth-observation satellite platforms for US company Vantor. Deliveries will start from EnduroSat's European lines, with the US plant due to come online by the end of 2027.