Belgian semiconductor company TUSK IC has raised €15 million to move satellite-communications chips from prototypes towards high-volume production, tackling a less visible constraint on expanding low-Earth-orbit networks: the price and complexity of the equipment customers need on the ground.

The KU Leuven spin-out develops beamformer integrated circuits for electronically steered satellite antennas, using standard CMOS semiconductor manufacturing rather than relying solely on more specialised high-frequency processes.

The Series A was led by Matterwave Ventures, FORWARD.one, and the Flanders Future Tech Fund managed by PMV, with participation from the Schaubroeck family and existing investors. TUSK also holds a European Space Agency contract supported by Belgium’s BELSPO under the ARTES telecommunications programme.

The engineering choice has a commercial objective. Satellite operators can place increasingly large constellations into orbit, but users still need terminals capable of tracking moving satellites electronically and handling high-capacity links. If those terminals remain expensive or power-intensive, the potential market for the network above them narrows.

The terminal is part of satellite economics

Low- and medium-Earth-orbit networks rely on ground equipment capable of maintaining connections as satellites move across the sky. Electronically steered arrays do that without mechanically rotating a traditional dish, but require multiple radio-frequency components to control signals across the antenna.

Beamformer chips sit inside that architecture, adjusting signal phase and amplitude so the antenna can point electronically. Ka-band systems can provide high-capacity communications, although operating at those frequencies introduces demanding radio and thermal constraints.

TUSK argues that mainstream CMOS manufacturing can reduce cost and power consumption compared with specialist alternatives. If those economics survive volume production, the effect extends beyond the component because terminal cost influences where satellite communications can compete with fibre and terrestrial mobile networks.

Cheaper terminals could broaden applications including industrial connectivity, mobile communications, resilient backup links, and services in areas where terrestrial infrastructure is difficult or uneconomic to deploy.

Industrialisation will decide the outcome

Moving from functional silicon to mass production is where semiconductor startups often meet a much tougher test than demonstrating the initial device. Chips have to produce consistent yields, tolerate manufacturing variation, pass reliability requirements, and integrate into customer systems without pushing cost or power beyond the product’s commercial limits.

TUSK says the capital will accelerate commercialisation and the transition towards high-volume production. It is also working with an unnamed satellite-communications manufacturer to integrate the technology into an electronically steered antenna.

Customer integration is consequential because radio-frequency devices rarely operate in isolation. Antenna architecture, packaging, firmware, thermal management, power systems, and the rest of the radio chain determine whether a technically strong chip produces a competitive terminal.

The funding therefore moves TUSK into the phase where design differentiation has to become manufacturing repeatability. The company operates without owning a fabrication plant, allowing it to use external semiconductor manufacturing rather than carrying the capital requirements of a fab.

European chips extend beyond processors

European semiconductor policy is often reduced to the pursuit of advanced computing processors and fabrication capacity, although radio-frequency, power, automotive, industrial, and communications chips remain important areas of regional expertise.

TUSK sits inside Belgium’s unusually dense semiconductor research ecosystem, while public-backed regional capital in the funding round shows how governments are trying to move research-linked technology into commercial production.

The satellite market brings its own sovereignty questions because secure connectivity depends not only on satellites and launch capability but on the components and terminals connecting users to them. Diverse suppliers can reduce reliance on vertically integrated providers, although genuine interoperability depends on system standards as well as chip availability.

TUSK still has to demonstrate that standard CMOS delivers the performance and economics required at production scale. Its €15 million round finances that next test, where success will be measured not by how novel the chip appears in a laboratory but by whether equipment manufacturers can build it repeatedly and cheaply enough for a much larger terminal market.