David Wither

The round is being led by NetScientific subsidary EMV Capital Ltd alongside Scottish Enterprise, Kelvin Capital Limited, and The Future Fund.

Sofant has also announced a contract with a Fortune Global 500 defence company to support the development of a next-generation tactical communication system.

Sofant will use the proceeds from this investment round to build a satellite communications terminal which targets mobile applications during the first half of 2023, and with commercial sales expected to begin later in the year. During the past year, Sofant has doubled the size of its team and achieved several significant technical and commercial milestones which have cleared the pathway to market.

Sofant is building a proprietary, highly efficient radio platform that directly addresses the most difficult challenges facing future wireless communication systems. While Sofant is targeting satellite communications and terrestrial fifth-generation (5G) telecommunications where power consumption is reduced by more than 70%, it has now also demonstrated the relevance of its technology to national security applications.

Dr Ilian Iliev, CEO of NetScientific and Sofant Board member, said that: “We are delighted with Sofant’s tremendous progress in their development roadmap. They continue to make a key contribution to the UK’s space tech and telecoms sectors by developing a key component for increased resilience and energy efficiency in SatComs and other telecommunications systems.

“We also congratulate Sofant on their first commercial agreement with a leading defence contractor, as global awareness of the critical importance of communications to national security increases. We expect Sofant to play a significant role in future communication systems and are very pleased that its value is already recognised by industry leaders.”

David Wither, CEO of Sofant, added: “We are very pleased to have investors who understand the disruptive nature of Sofant’s technology. When Sofant closed the previous funding round we told our investors we would demonstrate our core technology, which occurred in June of 2022.

“Sofant will use the proceeds from this investment round to build a satellite communications terminal which targets mobile applications, with commercial sales expected to begin later in the year.”

This investment will result in the direct equity holding in Sofant by NetScientific of 1.8% at an aggregate value of £0.4m based on this funding round, in addition to EMVC’s Capital Under Advisory representing 27.2%.