Tumbleweed raises €6.9m Seed round after its first orbital launch
Pact leads the financing for modular microgravity laboratories, with Vanagon Ventures, Prototype Capital and EWOR participating.
Tumbleweed has raised a €6.9 million Seed round led by Pact, with participation from Vanagon Ventures, Prototype Capital and EWOR. The financing follows the July launch of Oasis Alpha, the Vienna-based company’s first commercial satellite.
The company is building an orbital research service around standardised laboratory containers called Pods. Customers prepare their experiments on Earth while Tumbleweed supplies the spaceflight infrastructure and operates the mission.
Turning a first mission into a service
Oasis Alpha launched on SpaceX’s Transporter-17 mission on 7 July 2026 with experiments for four customers, all first-time users of space. That flight gives the company operating experience to build on as it develops subsequent missions.
CEO and co-founder Julian Rothenbuchner describes the objective as making microgravity research accessible to laboratories and manufacturers that lack their own space engineering capability.
The next step includes payload return
Tumbleweed is developing Oasis Beta for a planned 2028 mission with re-entry capability. Returning physical samples would broaden the range of research it can support beyond experiments whose results can be transmitted digitally.
More than a third of its 25 employees have also invested personal money across the company’s funding rounds, according to Tech.eu. Their combined six-figure commitment spans multiple rounds.
Use of funds
Microgravity research infrastructure
Orbital platform development