Technology company Rohde & Schwarz is entering into a strategic partnership with Munich-based startup Orbint. The spin-off of Universität der Bundeswehr München has been working on satellite-based signal intelligence since 2025. With this investment, Rohde & Schwarz is expanding its portfolio in the electromagnetic spectrum to include space applications. The four founders Alexander Schmidt, Simon Heine, Daniel Weinzierl, and Winfried Stock are developing a distributed satellite network that detects, identifies, and locates signals in near real-time. The system processes the data on board the satellites themselves.
Alexander Orellano, Executive Vice President Technology Systems at Rohde & Schwarz, says:
“In the current security policy environment, signal intelligence from space is a key capability for Europe. With Orbint, we gain a highly specialized partner whose expertise and innovation power consistently complement ours. As an established technology company, we are deliberately collaborating with a startup. We are convinced that such cooperation can accelerate the development of modern defense and space technologies.”
Orbint co-founder Alexander Schmidt emphasizes the importance of the partnership:
“It was important for us to find a partner who not only brings capital but creates real added value through technological depth, substantive expertise, and market proximity. Rohde & Schwarz has a broad technological base and strong interfaces across all domains. Combined with our space activities, this opens up new innovation potential and operational excellence. We are very much looking forward to the future partnership and shared vision. At the same time, we are grateful for the excellent startup environment and outstanding support at Universität der Bundeswehr München, which has accompanied and shaped our journey from the beginning.”
Orbint: from research to deployment
Orbint emerged from the small satellite mission SeRANIS (Seamless Radio Access Networks for Internet of Space), an orbital experimental laboratory for communications and intelligence technologies. For university president Eva-Maria Kern, the spin-off demonstrates how security-relevant research reaches practical application:
“Founding is now an integral part of modern engineering science. The Orbint spin-off impressively shows that Universität der Bundeswehr München, together with Dtec.bw, is deliberately strengthening security and defense-relevant research and creating pathways to application. I am pleased that, together with the renowned technology company Rohde & Schwarz, we are contributing to Germany’s technological sovereignty in space through our developments in satellite technology. Partnerships like this are key building blocks in enabling scientific findings to serve national security in a sustainable way.”
Andreas Knopp, spokesperson for the Space Research Center SPACE and initiator of the SeRANIS project, adds on the development momentum:
“In just five years, we have managed the leap from basic research to spin-off. A new pace that we urgently need in Germany to quickly transform innovations in security and defense contexts into effective capabilities. This was made possible by an excellent team, outstanding conditions in our research center, and funding through SeRANIS, Germany’s largest university space research project. From the start, we have designed research so that it is compatible with industry partners and the German armed forces. With Rohde & Schwarz, we now have the ideal partner to bring our technologies into operational systems and complete the transfer into practice.”
