BGK said ICEYE operates the world’s largest constellation of SAR (synthetic aperture radar)-equipped microsatellites and has launched 54 spacecraft since 2018, enabling round-the-clock, near-real-time Earth monitoring with 90-minute revisit intervals in all weather.
Its imagery supports defense and disaster-response users, including the governments of the United States, Brazil and Japan, as well as Ukraine. In 2025, the armed forces of Poland, the Netherlands and Portugal signed satellite delivery contracts, with Finland expected to join soon.
ICEYE plans to expand manufacturing capacity. The company’s Warsaw facilities include a Satellite Operations Center that manages the global constellation, a planning team, and an R&D lab building key subsystems, BGK said.
Vinci did not rule out further investment. “Our investment in ICEYE means Poland is entering a completely new satellite segment at an early stage,” Vinci CEO Bartosz Drabikowski said, citing demand from public and private buyers and a market “growing by $2 billion annually.”
He added: “We are entering this prospective market with a strong appetite, seeing an opportunity for Poland’s development and to multiply Vinci’s capital.”
ICEYE CEO and co-founder Rafał Modrzewski called the move “a step into the future” for Poland, saying BGK recognizes the strategic need to back space technologies whose importance for security and the global economy “is constantly growing,” and that New Space firms are reshaping the industry.
BGK President Mirosław Czekaj said the deal advances the bank’s 2025-2030 strategy to support innovative Polish technologies and “dual-use” solutions spanning agriculture, crisis management and defense. He noted a recent Defense Ministry contract to buy three radar satellites, with an option to expand to six, and said the first Polish military satellite is slated for launch in 2025.
Vinci, part of the BGK group, manages three alternative investment companies with over PLN 1 billion in capital, backing Polish tech firms with PLN 10–90 million per deal. BGK, a state-owned development bank, reported nearly PLN 270 billion in assets and almost PLN 41 billion in equity at end-2024.
(jh)
Source: PAP