Digest · 28 September 2026
European hard tech, another quiet week for new cheques — but the money that did move is squarely industrial. After a fortnight dominated by defence and space megarounds, the standout is Sofia’s EnduroSat, which banked $205M to become Bulgaria’s second tech unicorn and take its modular satellites into serial production. Alongside it, Scotland’s iGii raised a €26.5M Series B to commercialise a home-grown carbon nanomaterial, and Antwerp’s TUSK IC landed a €15M Series A to push its Ka-band satellite chips into mass production. The week’s other notable deep-tech round — Barcelona medtech Anaconda Biomed’s $56M for its stroke-thrombectomy platform — has no public careers page, so it’s named here but left off the linked list below. Here are the rounds with a live careers link, biggest first. Figures as reported — verify on each company’s site.
Sofia, Bulgaria · endurosat.com · 16 Sep · modular satellites & constellations · ~$1B+ valuation
EnduroSat designs and mass-produces standardised modular satellites — its FRAME line runs from ESPA-class buses up to multi-tonne platforms — and operates them for commercial and government customers. The $205M round, led by Riot Ventures and Atreides Management with the European Innovation Council, GV, Founders Fund, Lux Capital and others, makes it Bulgaria’s second tech unicorn and funds high-volume serial production of the FRAME line, a new US manufacturing site and an expansion of its Sofia Space Center; it also just won a 24-bus contract for a Vantor Earth-observation constellation. Moving from bespoke builds to serial spacecraft manufacturing points to sustained senior hiring across production and manufacturing, hardware, avionics and thermal engineering, systems engineering, embedded and flight software, space services and mission operations, plus government-facing business development. → Careers
Stirling, Scotland, UK · igii.uk · 16 Sep · advanced carbon nanomaterials
iGii (formerly Integrated Graphene) makes Gii, a three-dimensional porous carbon nanomaterial grown at room temperature and scalable to industrial volumes, used in multi-analyte biosensors, flexible printed battery electrodes and thin-film microheaters. The £22.7M (€26.5M) Series B — led by the Scottish National Investment Bank with PXN Ventures, Archangels and Scottish Enterprise — funds the shift from proprietary material to long-term supply agreements with manufacturers, with headcount set to grow toward roughly 70 by year-end. Commercialising an advanced material points to hiring across development and analytical chemistry, sensor and electrode engineering, process and manufacturing scale-up, quality and characterisation, plus commercial and partnerships roles. → Careers
Antwerp, Belgium · tusk-ic.com · 18 Sep · Ka-band satellite (mmWave) chips
TUSK IC designs mmWave CMOS chips for satellite communications — Ka-band front-ends built to cut the cost of satellite-internet terminals and ground equipment and widen access to space connectivity. The €15M Series A moves those chips from design into mass production and scales the engineering team. Taking a semiconductor design house into volume points to hiring across RF and mmWave analog IC design, verification, test and characterisation, packaging and productisation, applications engineering, plus business development into satcom OEMs. → Careers
Three rounds, three flavours of European self-reliance — and all of it capital for the industrial phase, not the lab. EnduroSat is building a sovereign European satellite factory; iGii is turning a proprietary carbon material into a domestic supply chain for sensors and electrodes; TUSK IC is putting European silicon inside the satellite-internet terminals that today lean on a handful of foreign suppliers. Even the week’s medtech highlight, Anaconda Biomed’s $56M for stroke thrombectomy, is money to finish a US pivotal trial and manufacture at scale. It was a quiet week for new deal count, but every cheque that cleared was aimed at the same thing: serial production, qualification for volume, supply agreements and clinical scale-up. The recurring HardTech Careers pattern holds — a fresh European deep-tech round is usually the signal that the binding constraint is shifting from R&D to manufacturing, regulatory approval, deployment and commercial leadership, which is exactly where the senior hiring lands.