Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite operator Univity has announced the closing of a €27 million ($31.63m) Series-A funding round.

The round saw investment groups Blast.Club, Expansion, and the Deeptech 2030 Fund, managed on behalf of the French State by Bpifrance (Banque publique d’investissement) as part of France 2030, as well as two family offices.

The funds will be used to power its uniShape very low Earth orbit (VLEO) 5G demonstrator, specialized for commercial telecom operators hoping to scale up from 2028.

“We are delighted to continue supporting Univity, whose globally impactful innovations in VLEO and 5G NTN (non-terrestrial network) spectrum are critical to enabling telecom operators to remain competitive and independent in the space connectivity market,” said Stéphane Lefevre-Sauli, senior investment director at Bpifrance. “This investment fully addresses national and European sovereignty challenges in connectivity, which are at the core of our investment thesis.”

UniShape will be developed with the support of the French space agency CNES (Centre national d’études spatiales), the first VLEO project that the agency has worked on. The project comprises two 5G satellites that will validate end-to-end high-throughput 5G via satellite and direct-to-cell smartphone connectivity, both through ground stations and end-user devices.

The funding round will strengthen the company’s teams in engineering, industrialization, and business development to ensure readiness for the 2028 scale-up phase.

Paris-based Univity stresses the sovereignty challenge facing Europe and its telecoms capability, predicting a global market comprising tens of billions of Euros by 2030, a significant strategic dimension under threat by “vertically integrated models from new entrants”, potentially referring to the incredible scaling of Starlink and Amazon Leo (formerly Project Kuiper).

The company received €31m ($36m) in public funding in September 2025 directly from CNES as part of the agency’s call for France 2030 projects to develop French 5G. Combined with co-financing, the company saw a total of $51.26m.

The use of VLEO means even shorter satellite lifespans, gaining better performance and safer operation, as well as more predictable destructive re-entries, which the company touts as a sustainability advantage in the face of calls by scientists to take alumina pollution in the upper atmosphere more seriously.

The state-backed initiative aims to adopt a friendlier approach than vertical commercial B2C constellations, which “places telecom operators back at the center of the value chain”, easing the process of integration between terrestrial mobile networks and 5G non-terrestrial networks without relying on “saturated” frequency bands.