ArcSpace

ArcSpace makes an electron-beam welder small enough to fly. On the ground an electron-beam machine is mostly vacuum pumps and shielding, and the company's founder puts it at 98 per cent auxiliary equipment that orbit provides for free. What remains is a compact gun, a power supply and the control software to weld without anyone watching. The first demonstration, about twelve kilograms, is to fly on a partner's spacecraft in 2027 and run hour-long sessions of short welds, more than a hundred seconds of welding in each.

Guillaume Mohara and Adam Abdin founded the company in France in 2022, and the pitch is that repairing, assembling and modifying hardware in orbit needs a way to join metal, which nobody yet sells. A €2 million seed round closed in August 2026, led by the Czech fund DEPO Ventures with SCE Freiraum Ventures, IRDI Capital Investissement and French business angels. Exotrail and Infinite Orbits are named as commercial partners, and institutional contracts bring in about €200,000 a year.

Nothing has welded in space yet. The demonstration is a year away and depends on a host spacecraft that had not been named when the round closed.