At the end of a truly extraordinary year for I3P, the Innovative Companies Incubator of Politecnico di Torino which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary with a rich series of special initiatives together with its community of innovators, during the traditional “Festa delle Startup” event in December Kurs Orbital was awarded the new title of “ESA BIC Turin Start-up of the Year” for its achievements during the Turin incubation program dedicated to new space entrepreneurship.
Giuseppe Scellato, President of I3P, said: “Within the space economy, Kurs Orbital has followed an outstanding entrepreneurial path: after establishing itself in the Piedmont region, the start-up raised several million euros in funding, which allowed it to structure the team and accelerate the development phases of its technical solution.”
The “ESA BIC Turin Start-up of the Year”
Founded in 2022 in Turin, the innovative enterprise Kurs Orbital is incubated in I3P and is one of the first start-ups to have completed the ESA BIC Turin incubation program, managed by I3P with the technological support of Politecnico di Torino and LINKS Foundation, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). Among the program's eight “alumni” 2024, Kurs Orbital was awarded “ESA BIC Turin Start-up of the Year” due to the level of entrepreneurial growth achieved over the past two years and the significant financial investment already received in its project.
Kurs Orbital aims to democratize the on-orbit servicing and space logistics markets with its innovative standardized rendezvous module, ARCap, which can enable any spacecraft to autonomously perform proximity, approach, docking, and on-orbit capture maneuvers, even with uncooperative targets such as space debris or malfunctioning satellites.
The company won the Start Cup Piemonte Valle d'Aosta 2022 business plan competition, participated in the Seraphim Space Camp Accelerator and the SpaceFounders Acceleration Program, won several ASI-sponsored calls, and in March 2024 raised €3.7 million in seed investment in a round led by OTB Ventures with Credo Ventures, Galaxia, In-Q-Tel (IQT) and Inovo.
Volodymyr Usov, Co-Founder & CEO of Kurs Orbital, commented: “These two years have been eventful to say the least. I3P and ESA BIC Turin have supported us tremendously, especially guiding us in our first applications to calls, programs and competitions. We won Start Cup Piemonte Valle D'Aosta in our first year, met many other interesting start-ups and developed valuable collaborations with some of them. And now that we are starting to walk on our own, we want to sincerely thank the entire incubator team for their tremendous support in our growth journey.”
