The firm also confirmed a euro 1.1 million multi-unit sale to a satellite operator and plans for an in-orbit demonstration aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 in February 2026.

The round was co-led by the imec.istart future fund, with the Flanders Future Tech Fund, managed by PMV, also participating. Additional capital came from existing backer imec.istart, a leading European university-affiliated accelerator.

Sterna is a high-performance data processing unit built with NVIDIA technology, designed to execute advanced algorithms in orbit. By processing data onboard, it removes the need to downlink large raw datasets, enabling faster, more efficient satellite-based services.

Its SpaceFeather software stack supports autonomous, resilient, and upgradeable operations. Features include a space-hardened Linux OS, autonomous health monitoring, radiation fault detection and recovery, plus an in-orbit framework for deploying new applications after launch.

"Customers aren't waiting for flight validation, they're signing now," said founder and CEO Nick Destrycker. "With a full launch manifest, secured commercial contracts, and our first mission set for Falcon 9, this funding enables us to scale to meet demand for real-time intelligence from space."

Kris Vandenberk, managing partner at imec.istart future fund, stated: "EDGX represents exactly the kind of transformative infrastructure play we look for. The space industry is hitting a fundamental bottleneck; we're generating massive amounts of data in orbit but still using outdated 'store and forward' architectures. EDGX is solving this by bringing AI-powered edge computing directly into space, enabling satellites to analyse and act on data in real-time rather than waiting for ground processing."

Related Links
EDGX
Space Technology News - Applications and Research