Pre-seed £2.5m for selective onboard compression to deliver more usable Earth‑observation imagery
This article covers The Compression Company, a spacetech startup that has raised £2.5m in a pre-seed funding round to run data-compression software onboard satellites. The funding aims to support development and deployment of onboard compression to help satellite operators transmit more usable Earth observation data during limited ground-station passes.
The Compression Company, a spacetech startup, has raised £2.5m in a pre-seed funding round to run data-compression software directly onboard satellites so operators can transmit more usable Earth observation data during limited ground-station passes. The move targets a persistent bottleneck in the space data chain: sensors are capturing ever more imagery, but bandwidth constraints mean much of it is delayed, degraded, or discarded.
Why it matters
Earth observation satellites are generating vastly more data, but the capacity to get that data to the ground has not kept pace. That gap forces operators to decide which imagery to prioritise, limiting real-time utility for applications such as maritime surveillance, disaster response and agricultural monitoring.
Onboard compression changes that trade-off by reducing file sizes before downlink. If successful at scale, the approach could let existing satellites deliver more high-value observations without launching additional hardware, lowering storage and transmission costs and speeding up access to time-sensitive insights.
Inside the product
The Compression Company’s software applies variable compression within each image: low-value areas such as cloud cover receive heavier compression while high-value features — for example, detected ships in maritime surveillance — are preserved at higher fidelity. The technique aims to be selective rather than uniformly lossy, preserving usability for downstream analytics.
Because satellites increasingly include more onboard compute, the company positions its solution as a software-only deployment that can be integrated into current spacecraft without new hardware. The platform originated at Entrepreneurs First and has its first orbital deployment scheduled to go live in Q1 2026. The company plans to use the funding to expand its engineering team and support further commercial rollouts with satellite operators.
Who are the investors?
The round totalling £2.5m is a pre-seed investment. Long Journey is the named backer in the announcement; no other participants were disclosed.
In the announcement, Lee Jacobs, Founding Partner at Long Journey, said:
Space has become a data industry, but the ability to move and work with that data has lagged badly behind its generation. The Compression Company is tackling one of the most fundamental constraints in the ecosystem with a software-first approach that’s both technically ambitious and immediately useful to operators. Michael and Joe pair deep, original thinking with real builder instincts, and we’re excited to back them as they create a new layer of infrastructure for the space data stack.
If you're researching potential backers in this space:
- Explore our list of space venture capital firms in the UK
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Founder perspective
The Compression Company was founded by Michael Stanway and Joe Griffith, who met while studying neurotechnology at Imperial College London. The founders say their product addresses the imbalance between data capture and data transfer.
In the announcement, Michael Stanway, Co-founder & CEO at The Compression Company, said:
There’s been huge investments in capturing more data from space, but far less attention paid to how that data actually gets back to Earth. Until now, the answer has been to launch more satellites. We’re taking a different approach - using software to compress data in orbit, so operators can bring down more useful information from existing satellites and unlock more value from the data they’re already capturing.
In the announcement, Joe Griffith, CTO at The Compression Company, said:
AI compression unlocks a huge opportunity with Earth Observation data. Operators have always had to make trade-offs about what gets sent. When more of the data you collect can actually make it to the ground, those trade-offs change and you can be far more selective about what you throw away, and far more ambitious about the services you build on top.
The bigger picture
This funding round sits at the intersection of two trends: increasing onboard compute on small satellites, and a shift toward software layers that extract more value from existing hardware. Rather than adding more sensors to solve a data-backhaul problem, software-first approaches like this propose a more efficient alternative.
The deal also reflects growing interest from UK spacetech investors in infrastructure-level solutions that sit between raw data capture and downstream analytics. If The Compression Company’s early orbital deployment demonstrates reliable gains in usable downlinked data, similar software could become a standard part of satellite operating stacks.
The pre-seed raise follows a pattern of UK startups emerging from university ecosystems and incubators such as Entrepreneurs First, where technical founders build deep-domain solutions with commercial pathways. As satellites proliferate across Europe and the UK, tools that improve data throughput and reduce costs will be central to turning observation capacity into usable intelligence.
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