Imperial College founders raise €2.8 million for The Compression Company; a satellite data compression platform

UK and US-based SpaceTech startup The Compression Company is announcing a €2.8 million ($3.4 million) pre-Seed round to tackle limited satellite bandwidth with AI-driven compression that runs directly onboard satellites, reportedly reducing file sizes by over 95% and enabling each one to transmit far more data to Earth during each short ground-station pass.

The round was led by Long Journey (early backers of SpaceX, Uber and Anduril). The new funding will be used to expand the engineering team and support further commercial rollouts with satellite operators.

“There’s been huge investments in capturing more data from space, but far less attention paid to how that data actually gets back to Earth,” says Michael Stanway, co-founder and CEO of The Compression Company. “Until now, the answer has been to launch more satellites. We’re taking a different approach – using software to compress data in orbit, so operators can bring down more useful information from existing satellites and unlock more value from the data they’re already capturing.”

Recent EU-Startups coverage shows sustained SpaceTech investment across 2025–2026, spanning infrastructure, Earth observation and onboard compute.

In November 2025, France’s Infinite Orbits secured €40 million to scale satellite servicing capabilities, while Reflex Aerospace raised €50 million to strengthen satellite manufacturing and infrastructure. France-based U-Space raised €24 million to advance high-cadence satellite launches and constellation deployment. In Spain, Kreios Space secured €8 million to develop very low Earth orbit satellite technology, while UK-based Spaceflux raised €6.1 million to expand its satellite-tracking network.

On the Earth observation side, Germany’s Marble Imaging raised €5.3 million to scale its very-high-resolution EO constellation. Belgium’s EDGX secured €2.3 million to boost onboard AI compute for satellites, Italy’s Astradyne raised €2 million for ultralight solar panels, and Finland’s Vexlum secured €10 million to scale semiconductor laser manufacturing for quantum and space applications.

Together, these rounds amount to approximately €148 million in disclosed funding across the sector. Within this context, The Compression Company’s €2.8 million pre-Seed round represents a comparatively smaller but strategically aligned raise focused on software-layer optimisation.

While much of the recent capital has flowed into satellite manufacturing, launch capability, servicing and onboard hardware, the company’s AI-driven compression platform addresses the downstream constraint of data transmission.

“AI compression unlocks a huge opportunity with Earth Observation data. Operators have always had to make trade-offs about what gets sent,” adds Joe Griffith, CTO of The Compression Company. “When more of the data you collect can actually make it to the ground, those trade-offs change and you can be far more selective about what you throw away, and far more ambitious about the services you build on top.”

Founded in 2025, The Compression Company is a data compression platform designed to optimise the storage and transmission of earth observation and geospatial data. Its technology uses AI-driven compression to reduce the size of data directly on satellites and on the ground, enabling operators to send significantly more information back to Earth through limited bandwidth.

By prioritising the most valuable parts of each image, The Compression Company helps satellite operators lower costs, reduce delays, and deliver usable data faster without changing existing workflows.

The company was founded by Michael Stanway (CEO) and Joe Griffith (CTO), who met while studying neurotechnology at Imperial College London. Stanway’s research focused on keeping brain tissue alive outside the body – work that required handling massive imaging datasets. Griffith studied how the brain itself compresses information, developing neural network approaches to data compression. Griffith left his PhD to co-found the company after the pair recognised that the same techniques could solve bottlenecks far beyond neuroscience, and identified space as the clearest opportunity.

The Compression Company emerged from Entrepreneurs First, an international talent investor, with strong early traction and has shipped its first orbital deployment, scheduled to go live in Q1 2026.

“Space has become a data industry, but the ability to move and work with that data has lagged badly behind its generation,” says Lee Jacobs, Managing Partner and Founder, Long Journey. “The Compression Company is tackling one of the most fundamental constraints in the ecosystem with a software-first approach that’s both technically ambitious and immediately useful to operators. Michael and Joe pair deep, original thinking with real builder instincts, and we’re excited to back them as they create a new layer of infrastructure for the space data stack.”

According to the company, the volume of data generated in space is staggering and rapidly growing. The EU’s Copernicus Sentinels alone produce 20 terabytes daily, and leading commercial constellations generate several times that. Over the next decade, more than 5,400 additional EO satellites are expected to launch – nearly triple the previous ten years.

Every new satellite adds to the volume of imagery and sensor data captured about the Earth – data that can inform everything from climate monitoring and disaster responses to defence, agriculture, and global logistics.

Satellite operators can capture extraordinary levels of detail, but getting that data back to Earth remains a fundamental challenge.

Satellites operate with limited bandwidth and typically have only a few minutes per pass to transmit data when they come within range of a ground station – an antenna on Earth that receives satellite data. As a result, only 2% of the data recorded by each satellite makes it back to Earth, while the rest is delayed, degraded, or discarded, despite its potential value and the high cost of collecting it.

The Compression Company reduces the size of the data directly on the satellite, reportedly shrinking the size of files without compromising accuracy or usability. Rather than using blanket compression, the platform applies different levels of compression within each image. Cloud cover, which accounts for nearly 60% of satellite imagery, is compressed far more heavily, since it returns little value for users.

In maritime surveillance, detected ships are preserved at full fidelity while the surrounding ocean is compressed more aggressively. The principle is the same: save bandwidth for high-value data.

This allows operators to download far more data during each transmission window, reduce storage and transmission costs, and deliver usable information faster and more frequently.

As satellites are increasingly launched with more onboard compute, including graphics processing units (GPUs), the company is able to deliver this capability as a software-only solution, deploying advanced compression directly in orbit without requiring new hardware.

“We’re at an inflection point,” adds Michael. “Once data transmission is no longer the bottleneck, the pace of innovation across Earth observation and its applications can increase dramatically. Our goal is to make that possible.”

As the space economy continues to expand, the company believes intelligent compression will become a foundational capability, supporting operators to capture more, deliver insights faster, and provide new products without launching new hardware.

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