French start-up Gama announced on 12 November 2026 a €15 million seed round to set up, in Ivry-sur-Seine, its first production line for deployable solar arrays designed for satellites. Behind the amount lies an industrial bet: mass-producing, with silicon cells taken from the rooftop market, a component that has become critical as satellites demand ever more electricity.
A €15M seed round to build a factory
According to Tech.eu and Tech Funding News, the round brings together the funds Transition, Planet A, Draper Associates and Manta Ray. SpaceNews converts the sum to $16.6 million, and Maddyness lists the deal among the week’s eight French funding rounds, which total €118.2M. For a seed round, the ticket is large: it finances an industrial tool more than a prototype.
The money is to serve three goals, according to Tech.eu: bringing forward investment in the manufacturing line for the product called Wing, strengthening in-house development and functional and environmental testing capabilities, and hiring around sixty engineers in mechanics, power electronics, software, production and testing. Tech Funding News specifies that the company employs, as of 12 November 2026, around thirty people: the workforce would therefore triple.
From solar sail to mass-produced array
Gama was not founded to make solar arrays. Set up in 2022 by Andrew Nutter, Thibaud Elziere and Louis de Gouyon Matignon, who left the venture in 2024, the company initially developed solar sails, the large membranes that propel a spacecraft using the pressure of light. Its first mission, Gama Alpha, was launched in 2023. The company had also closed a first €2M round, led by Bpifrance and CNES with several individual investors, Tech Funding News recalls.
The team quickly realised it would be hard to find funding for the sail, Andrew Nutter told Tech Funding News, and changed course. According to the outlet, the experience gained on large deployable structures carries over directly to solar arrays. Payload adds that this shift responded to the supply difficulties faced by satellite operators. The technical team has been strengthened with two former SpaceX employees who worked on Starlink hardware and assembly lines: Daniel Chapman, chief technology officer, and Duncan Adams, vice-president of engineering.
Why electricity is becoming the limiting factor
Falling launch prices have shifted the constraint. According to Tech Funding News, what now limits a satellite is the available electrical power, because the array must fit folded inside the rocket fairing before deploying in orbit. Andrew Nutter sums up the issue to Tech.eu: the constraint has shifted to energy.
Wing is presented as a complete power system: solar generation, rotation of the arrays to track the sun, energy management and, optionally, storage. Gama also supplies control algorithms that run on the customer’s on-board computer. According to Payload, this software compensates for the flexibility of very large arrays without adding mass: stability is entrusted to computation rather than to structure, which makes it possible to build wings as thin and light as possible.
The bet on silicon and volume
Most manufacturers use so-called III-V cells, which perform better but are produced in small batches by a limited number of suppliers, with lead times that can exceed a year, according to Tech.eu and Payload. Gama is instead betting on silicon cells manufactured in very large volumes for terrestrial solar power. The efficiency is lower: around 20% compared with nearly 32% for the best germanium-based cells, according to BGR data cited by Tech Funding News.
The company intends to make up for this through scale. According to Payload, Gama is targeting a price of $10 per watt and plans a factory capable of producing 100 megawatts of arrays a year: these are targets announced by the company, not results. Andrew Nutter also advocates pooling the volumes of several satellite platform manufacturers to bring prices down. Once production starts, Gama is aiming, according to Tech.eu, for a delivery time of six months.
What it changes, and what remains to be proven
For the European space industry, the interest is first and foremost strategic: having a local supplier of a critical component, less dependent on a handful of cell manufacturers. For the start-up ecosystem, the deal shows that a mix of European and American funds, as described by Payload, is willing to finance a factory from the seed stage.
Many uncertainties remain. The only named customer is the American company Eclipse Space, founded by former Starlink engineers, with which a partnership was signed in September 2026: Eclipse builds the platform, Gama the arrays. The first demonstration unit is not expected until summer 2027. The competition is well established: Rocket Lab, owner of SolAero, launched silicon arrays for orbital data centres in 2026, and Redwire unveiled its ELSA array in March, Tech Funding News recalls, adding that it is uncertain whether Gama’s approach will win on cost per watt.
Frequently asked questions
What is Gama’s Wing system?
It is a satellite power system that combines a large deployable solar array, a sun-tracking mechanism, energy management, optional storage and control software installed on the customer’s on-board computer.
Why use silicon rather than III-V cells?
III-V cells offer better efficiency but are scarce and slow to obtain. Silicon, mass-produced for terrestrial solar power, is less efficient but available quickly and in large quantities, which should make it possible to lower the price per watt.
When will the first Gama arrays fly?
According to Tech.eu and Tech Funding News, delivery of the first demonstration unit is scheduled for summer 2027, as part of the partnership with Eclipse Space. No flight date has been announced.
Sources
- Gama secures €15M to tackle the growing power demands of satellites — Tech.eu, 2026-11-12
- Gama Raises €15M Seed to Boost Europe's Solar Array Supply Chain — Payload, 2026-11-13
- Transition, Planet A and Draper back €15M seed for Gama's space solar arrays — Tech Funding News, 2026-11-12
- Gama raises 15 million euros for large deployable solar arrays — SpaceNews, 2026-11-12
- Les startups françaises ont levé 118 millions d'euros cette semaine — Maddyness, 2026-11-13