Tumbleweed, the Vienna startup selling zero gravity
More than a third of this startup's 25 employees just put their own money into its seed round.
Tumbleweed, a Vienna space company, announced €6.9M on 3 November. Pact led, joined by Vanagon, Prototype Capital, EWOR and angel investors. The company calls it the largest space tech seed round ever raised in Austria. Its own team put in around €300,000.
What it sells is weightlessness by the box. Its Pods are pre-certified containers that keep an experiment powered and connected in orbit, so a lab ships its payload instead of spending years qualifying it for spaceflight. Prices start at €15,000. Every customer so far has been a first-time space user, the company says.
It launched before it raised. Oasis Alpha, Austria's first commercial satellite, went up on a SpaceX rideshare on 7 July, built in under nine months with four paying customers on board. CEO Julian Rothenbuchner told Trending Topics it cost less than €500,000 to build, and admits not everything on that test mission went smoothly.
Rothenbuchner, Leonhard Goliasch and Guillaume Brault founded the company in 2024. The original idea was a wind-driven Mars rover. EWOR was an early backer and, by Rothenbuchner's account, only took him on his third attempt. Support also came from ESA BIC Austria, run by Science Park Graz, and from the CASSINI initiative of EUSPA.
The money funds three missions in 2027 for more than ten customers. Oasis Beta follows in 2028, with re-entry to bring samples back to Earth.