Hélène Huby’s bold vision is making space exploration more affordable and accessible, providing a European challenger to a US-dominated sector

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The Exploration Company is a fast-growing tech company driven by a bold mission: to re-energize space transportation. Today, with over €200 million of funding and the endorsement of world leaders to support it, that vision is rapidly becoming a reality. 

Hélène Huby never imagined she’d be a rocket scientist when she studied for a Master’s degree in economics and applied mathematics in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Nor did she conceive of such a career when she undertook a Master’s in Public Administration in the mid-2000s. “I arrived in space, I would say, by chance,” she says.

Hélène and her four children moved to Germany following her husband’s job relocation – and so she had the chance to start fresh in a new country. She applied in 2013 to Airbus almost by chance, knowing little about satellites or rocket technology. Yet she quickly fell in love with the industry – not just for its willingness to push technological frontiers, but for its unique collaborative spirit.

“I love the people,” she says. “I love the technology. I love the political stakes, and that unique mix of the technical frontier of humanity, the politics of defence and the teamwork you get with space. It’s impossible to build a very complex vehicle without pulling together as a team.” That’s a lesson she learned when working at Airbus in Germany, initially as Head of Innovation, then as Program Director of ArianeGroup, a joint venture between Airbus and Safran, and then in 2018 Vice President of space strategy at Airbus and the European Service Module (ESM) on the Orion spacecraft. The ESM is a critical component of the capsule designed to return humanity to the Moon for the first time since 1972.

But while the extraordinary adventure of space appealed to Hélène, she grew increasingly frustrated with the limitations of traditional aerospace development. The Orion capsule, while groundbreaking, was a single-use vehicle with limited technological innovation.

It wasn’t a frustration with Airbus, but the broader European vision. “There are a lot of people with a lot of competencies, but sometimes we lack ambition in Europe,” she admits. “We could do so much more.”

“So much more” for Hélène was a space vehicle that would bring together European space efforts under one ambitious goal. “I wanted to scale this collaborative spirit that we have in Europe, worldwide, and I wanted to contribute to build the next space frontier – not a confrontational environment, but an environment of collaboration,” she says. So in the second half of 2020, she began hatching a plan to build what would become The Exploration Company.

The Exploration Company’s mission is to unleash European space capabilities and foster unprecedented international collaboration. Hélène could have remained with Airbus and tried to transform the company from the inside, or she could take the leap and try to disrupt an industry.

It wasn’t an easy decision. “If you look at it from a rational perspective, it’s crazy," Hélène admits. “But from a motivational perspective, it’s about what I want to do with my life. We only have X years and X hours: time is the one thing that’s never going to increase.”

“It’s very important to do our best within the very short timeframe we have on this planet.” 

She began building a shadow team with colleagues from Airbus and the ArianeGroup (Artur Koop, Jon Reijneveld and Pierre Vinet), and others she found through LinkedIn, including Sebastien Reichstadt. They met every weekend to hash out the concept of democratising access to space from within Europe by providing easy-to-access, comparatively low-cost space infrastructure.

She took herself to a hotel in Germany and spent three intensive days creating a business plan, using spreadsheets to validate the market potential. “After three days of work, it looked like there was a market – and it looked like there was a trend for profitability.” That gave her the confidence to make the biggest leap: leaving Airbus and striking out on her own.

In August 2021, The Exploration Company was born. Over the summer months, the founding team took the same leap, believing in the potential to do something new in space. “It was very brave,” she says – but she was confident the business could do more than just survive. It could thrive.

At the same time, Ted Persson, Partner, Jenny Dreier, Director at EQT Ventures, and the wider team were looking to explore opportunities to fund “new space”. “There is a whole new frontier, a whole new industry evolving and we knew we wanted to place a bet,” says Jenny. Mutual connections at Cherry Ventures mentioned to Ted and Jenny that the team at The Exploration Company were worth meeting.

In October 2022, Hélène met with Ted and Jenny in Munich about the potential of a partnership. The 7:30am breakfast meeting was a fortuitous one – but both sides have different memories. “We ordered breakfast,” says Jenny. “I don’t think she touched it, because she didn't stop talking very, very passionately about her plans for the space age. That’s where we got hooked.”

The pitch was simple, recalls Jenny. "It was all about making space and all the opportunities that come with it accessible. They provide the infrastructure for the new era of space exploration." And Hélène’s passionate, single-minded approach convinced them.

But what Jenny had taken as supreme confidence was something else for Hélène. “I was very stressed,” she says. “EQT not only has a huge reputation, but invests in bold founders who can transform the world.” Hélène believed it was a “must-win” meeting. She needn’t have worried. The two sides hit it off almost immediately. “I felt at home,” Hélène recalls. “These people, they understand what I’m doing.”

That was manna from heaven for Hélène. “We are on a difficult journey, so you want to have people next to you who know this thing is difficult, and they understand what you’re doing, and they can also help you with asking the right questions.” Hélène also felt confident that EQT Ventures would walk the walk. 

“EQT Ventures wants to transform the world. They are here to make big bets. And I felt that they would also be here in difficult times,” says Hélène.

A €40.5 million Series A round, co-led by EQT Ventures and Red River West, was announced in February 2023, four months after that Munich breakfast meeting. EQT Ventures then decided to double down when the Series B was on the table: a €150 million round announced in November 2024, Europe’s largest-ever for space tech. 

The round sent a signal about space sovereignty.“Hélène was able to make it very clear that so far, the only one that can do this privately in the world is Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and we need an alternative to that,” says Jenny. The investment round was almost fully raised from European investors – an indication, Jenny says, of the standing in which Hélène is held within that community. “People trust her to turn this into reality,” she explains. It’s also why she’s had audiences with Olaf Scholz, when he was German chancellor, and French president Emmanuel Macron.

The funding, and the support from EQT Ventures’ specialist teams, helped Hélène formalize her vision. To that breakfast meeting, Hélène had brought a tiny version of the sustainable, reusable space capsule that sits at the core of The Exploration Company’s promise: Nyx. True to her vision of a collaborative space future, Nyx is the first multi-mission, sustainable space exploration platform that is compatible with all major launchers. “EQT helped change the perception of The Exploration Company, especially in the US,” says Hélène. “It positioned us as a future leader.” 

Nyx’s first launch from French Guiana in July 2024, Mission Bikini, sent its ballistic re-entry demonstrator into space. “The next milestone is to launch a significantly larger capsule, which we call Mission Possible, this summer,” says Jenny. Both launches will be victories for Hélène and The Exploration Company, but they’ll also be victories for Europe, holding its own in an industry that has long been dominated by the United States. And they’ll be victories for humanity, Hélène hopes.

“The first product is a capsule,” says Hélène. “The goal of that capsule is to bring cargo, then astronauts, back and forth. Step two: we want to master the whole transportation chain, including the rocket. If everything goes well, we can make deals with nations, build launchpads, and launch and land on their territories.” It’s a shared goal that is core to Hélène’s vision. “The way we build our future is together and not against each other,” she says. “That’s really what we want to contribute to the world with The Exploration Company.”