A Second Look at Hiber, an Early EIC Accelerator Winner in IoT

In October 2019 the European Commission listed an Amsterdam company called Magnitude Space B.V. among the winners of the first EIC Accelerator pilot cut-off, with blended finance for Hiberband, "the low-power global area network enabling affordable and ubiquitous connectivity for the Internet of Things", according to the Commission's list of selected companies. By then the company had been trading as Hiber for two years: it had rebranded in November 2017, and the company register lists Magnitude Space B.V. as the former name of Hiber B.V., KvK 66317878, according to North Data. When the grant agreement was signed on 7 May 2020, CORDIS already named the beneficiary HIBER BV. The date of the legal name change could not be verified. The Commission's list names no other company for the project.

The plan was a constellation of nanosatellites that would pick up short messages from cheap, battery-powered sensors anywhere on Earth. The EU contributed €2,442,125 to a €3,488,750 project to launch twelve more satellites. Two went up. Days before the project closed in September 2021, Hiber gave up its own network. Twenty months later the company was bankrupt.

Where Hiber Stands Now

Hiber B.V. is in bankruptcy. The Amsterdam court granted it a provisional suspension of payments on 2 June 2023 and declared it bankrupt on 6 June 2023, according to the curator's first public report and faillissementsdossier.nl. Dutch IT Channel dated the suspension 5 June. The case is still open: the curator filed her thirteenth report on 12 August 2026, saying she had finished her investigation into whether the company was run lawfully, shared the findings with the supervisory judge and was weighing "possible next steps". The findings are not public, and she still sees no date for winding up the estate.

The business did not die with the company. Finch Capital, one of 13 shareholders, offered for the assets almost immediately, and was the only bidder. It paid €225,000 for Hiber's 51% stake in HWS Solutions B.V., a joint venture with WTS Energy, plus stock, inventory, old receivables and Hiber's disputed claim on Astrocast, and took over most of the staff and the office lease. The curator puts the total money involved, including June 2023 wages and an estate loan, at about €470,000. Satellite parts, laboratory equipment, a ground station in Delft and Hiber's patents were pledged to the RVO and stayed out of the deal. Finch's vehicle FC Space and WTS became the key shareholders of the joint venture, which became a standalone company on 1 July 2023 under managing directors Erik Boertje and Simon Philipsen, Satnews reported.

That company, HWS Solutions B.V., runs hiber.global today and sells HiberHilo, a remote monitoring kit for oil and gas wells, pipelines and platforms that sends pressure, temperature and flow readings over satellite or local networks. In March 2024 it bought Srett Industrie, a Paris maker of IoT hardware for explosive (ATEX) environments, and said the combined business served 8 of the 10 largest oil, gas and hydrogen companies, according to its announcement. It filed its balance sheet for 2025 on 27 May 2026, according to North Data; its revenue and staff are not public.

The Technology: Sensors That Wait for a Satellite

Cellular and low-power radio networks cover populated areas, which Hiber's EIC report put at about 10% of the Earth's surface. Satellite links existed elsewhere, but cost too much, and used too much power, for a sensor on a cow, a water pump or a remote oil well. Hiber's idea was a "store and forward" network: a small modem sleeps until one of the company's low-orbit CubeSats passes overhead, sends a short message, and the satellite stores it until it reaches a ground station. The name came from the modem's hibernation. The project summary on CORDIS promised battery life of more than ten years and coverage of the whole planet at least once a day.

The first two satellites, 6U CubeSats built by ISISPACE in Delft, were launched on an Indian PSLV on 29 November 2018 and on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare on 3 December 2018, according to Gunter's Space Page. The second generation was half the size, assembled in-house and fitted with propulsion to steer and deorbit, SmallSat News reported when Hiber Four flew on SpaceX's Transporter-1 in January 2021.

What Hiberband Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

Hiberband ran from 1 June 2020 to 30 September 2021. The objective on CORDIS was concrete: launch "our next 12 satellites (Hiber-3 until Hiber-14)", run four customer trials with AXA, 52Impact, Rabobank's mOOvement and Shell, and build towards 48 nanosatellites and 22 ground stations over six years. It forecast revenues of €80 million by 2024 and more than 700 jobs in Europe.

The final report is candid about the satellites. Hiber built and tested two new satellites in its own office, but Covid-19 had "significantly delayed and even bankrupted" launch providers, so it moved them onto conventional launches, "resulting in the launch of two satellites in early 2021. All other launches have been delayed beyond the project timeline." The ground work went better: new modulation and demodulation software, over-the-air updates, a cheaper second-generation gateway certified for key markets, and a generic tracking device, HiberEasypulse, already installed at customers. The report credits the project with HiberHilo for oil wells and HiberHeavy for mining and logistics vehicles, and says staff grew to "70+". It does not mention that the constellation had been dropped.

1. Launch 12 satellites, Hiber-3 to Hiber-14Not achievedTwo launched in early 2021; the rest were never launched and the licence was surrendered.
2. New ground stationsPartlyExisting stations upgraded for the new satellites, per the CORDIS report.
3. Modem, demodulator and two-way messagingDeliveredSoftware developed and trialled on hardware; "the basics" of two-way communication, per CORDIS.
4. Second-generation gateway and tracking deviceDeliveredGateway certified; HiberEasypulse installed at customers.
5. Four customer trialsPartlyShell is a named HiberHilo customer; trials with AXA, 52Impact and mOOvement were not reported.
6. €80M revenue by 2024Not achievedRevenue was €656,271 in 2022, per the curator; the company was bankrupt by 2024.

The device and software side produced products that are still sold. The core of the award, Hiber's own satellite network, did not. On 24 September 2021, six days before the project ended, Hiber told the US Federal Communications Commission it was surrendering its authorisation for a 24-satellite system. Of the four satellites it had launched, two were no longer operational and the other two had problems that "prevent Hiber from deploying its anticipated commercial service"; fixing them would be "cost prohibitive", and the pandemic had been "devastating" to its ability to raise money, SpaceNews reported from the filing. On 12 October it signed up to lease capacity on Inmarsat's ELERA network instead, according to SpaceNews and Satellite Today.

The curator's account puts the turn earlier. Hiber stopped developing and launching satellites at the end of 2020 and from then on worked only for the HiberHilo joint venture with WTS Energy, which uses third-party satellites, according to her first report, which relies on information from the company's director. The second-generation launches in early 2021 and the EIC report point to a later date.

The Money

The last large round came in March 2021: €26 million from the EIC Fund, a Dutch government innovation credit and existing shareholders, with Finch Capital, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency and Hartenlust Group named as other investors, according to TechCrunch and Tech.eu, which said Hiber was one of three companies to get the maximum available EIC investment. Neither gave the split, and the size of the EIC Fund's stake could not be verified. Hiber is not on the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked across all 16 pages in October 2026. North Data records state aid in the form of innovation credits of €1,769,000 in 2018 and €3,681,806 in 2019.

Revenue never caught up. The curator's corrected figures show revenue of €888,116 in 2019 and €656,271 in 2022, against net losses of €6.57 million, €9.95 million, €5.86 million and €8.72 million from 2019 to 2022. Silicon Canals reported the 2020 loss as €10 million.

The Takeover That Was Never Completed

On 30 May 2022 the Swiss nanosatellite operator Astrocast agreed to buy Hiber with new shares worth 16.5% of its capital, mainly for the L-band spectrum Hiber leased from Inmarsat for the Americas; Hiber also agreed to invest about $11 million in Astrocast's planned listing in Paris, and the deal depended on that listing, SpaceNews reported. The listing never happened. The deal lapsed at its 30 November 2022 deadline, and Hiber demanded $1.5 million from Astrocast, according to SpaceNews. Silicon Canals still described Hiber in June 2023 as "acquired" by Astrocast; the SpaceNews reports and the curator show the purchase was never completed.

The curator blames the failed deal for the collapse: the agreement barred Hiber from raising money from anyone but Astrocast, which could not provide it, and the company's cash position worsened. She dates the deal to mid-2021 and its end to mid-2022, which differs from the SpaceNews dates. Hiber then offered creditors an out-of-court settlement while restructuring, funded by short-term loans from a shareholder. Some preferential creditors refused, a court-confirmed plan under the Dutch WHOA scheme also failed, and in May 2023 the shareholder stopped funding.

Creditors are far from whole. By January 2025 unsecured claims stood at €14,009,843.53, including €5,829,539.89 from the RVO for its innovation credits, and the tax authority had a preferential claim for €2,778,324 in unpaid payroll taxes, VAT and corporate tax, according to the latest report. The estate held €120,395.27 in January 2026. Pledged server racks and research components were sold for €3,687.17 and a clean bench for €500, and a satellite left at premises Hiber had rented in Delft was sold in the reporting period to January 2025 for an undisclosed price. Whether the EU grant was fully paid out, and whether the EIC Fund recovered anything, is not public.

Why Europe Should Care

Satellite connectivity is now an EU priority: in October 2024 the Commission awarded the concession for IRIS², its own secure satellite constellation. Hiber was an early European attempt at the low-cost, low-power end of that market. It failed on two fronts: the satellites did not work well enough, and the money to replace them did not arrive. What survives is a European service business that rents satellite capacity from others, not European infrastructure.

The Verdict

Hiber's curator, HWS Solutions and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, court-published bankruptcy reports and press coverage, linked throughout.