TUSK IC Funding Moves Satcom Chips to Scale

TUSK IC funding of €15 million is meant to move the Belgian chip developer from working prototypes toward high-volume production of Ka-band beamformers for flat-panel satellite antennas. The Series A was disclosed on September 17 and was led by Matterwave Ventures, FORWARD.one and the Flanders Future Tech Fund managed by PMV.

Key takeaways: the round finances industrialisation rather than a new consumer service; TUSK IC is betting that standard CMOS can lower cost and power use; and the proof point is manufacturing yield at customer scale, not another laboratory demonstration. The company did not disclose a valuation.

Why TUSK IC funding matters

Everyone else is reporting a €15 million semiconductor round; we are explaining the production bottleneck. A beamformer chip can perform well in a prototype and still fail commercially if packaging, calibration, heat, reliability or fabrication yield become expensive at volume.

The company says its ConnectKa products use mainstream CMOS rather than the specialised silicon-germanium or other processes often used for demanding radio-frequency components. That could make fabrication more accessible and economical, but those cost and power advantages remain company claims until customers publish comparative results.

Flat-panel antennas steer a radio beam electronically instead of pointing a mechanical dish. That matters for aircraft, trains, ships, vehicles and fixed terminals that need to maintain a satellite link while moving or while using a low-profile installation.

The financing is therefore a bridge between two different engineering problems. The first is proving that a circuit architecture works. The second is making thousands of chips consistently, integrating them into antenna modules and meeting the environmental and reliability requirements of commercial and government buyers.

TUSK IC says it is working with a leading satellite-communications manufacturer on a new electronically steered array. The partner is unnamed, so this package does not infer a commercial order, shipment volume or deployment date. Integration work is evidence of customer engagement, not completed adoption.

What to watch next

The company also disclosed an earlier European Space Agency contract supported by Belgium under the ARTES programme. That contract and the equity round serve different purposes: public support can de-risk technical development, while investors are financing the path to a repeatable product and market.

Investors should watch tape-out success, packaged-chip qualification, foundry yield, module efficiency and customer design wins. Revenue will depend on more than the satellite market growing; antenna makers must decide that the CMOS approach meets their link-budget, thermal and reliability needs.

For India, the mechanism is relevant to a satellite and semiconductor policy agenda that often focuses on fabs. A fabless supplier can still capture value through RF design, packaging, testing and antenna integration, provided it has access to dependable manufacturing and demanding launch customers.

The competitive question is not whether standard CMOS exists. It is whether TUSK IC can deliver the required millimetre-wave performance at a system cost that changes antenna economics. Incumbent processes may cost more but arrive with mature qualification data and customer trust.

That is why the round should be judged against production evidence. Eclipse Space is segmenting satellite platforms, while Altair is funding AI satellite infrastructure. TUSK IC sits lower in the stack, where one component can influence terminal price and power.

In one sentence: TUSK IC funding pays for the difficult conversion of a promising Ka-band CMOS design into a qualified, repeatable component that antenna manufacturers can buy at volume.

Item	Verified detail
Public disclosure	17 September 2026
Round	€15 million Series A
Lead group	Matterwave, FORWARD.one, FFTF
Product	Standard-CMOS Ka-band beamformer chips
Use	Prototype-to-volume transition