Interview with Francho Garcia, CEO of Arkadia Space

1. Origins, motivation and vision

You have spent more than ten years in the space sector, including stints at ESA and PLD Space.

What moment or insight made you take the leap from engineer to founder and decide it was time to create Arkadia?

Francho García, CEO of Arkadia Space

The truth is that I never planned to start a company or "be a founder." Throughout my career I have always tried to follow my instinct and what my inner voice told me. But I do remember the exact moment: we were talking about our future at our previous company, and one of my colleagues, who is now a co-founder of Arkadia, said: "What if we put these values and this company culture into practice in a company of our own?" At that moment, seeing what a complete team we were, how well we knew each other and how well we had worked together, and thinking to myself, "I will never again get the chance to start a company in the space sector with such a brilliant group of people," I knew it was time to create Arkadia.

Arkadia was born in Castellón in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. What was it like to launch an aerospace deep tech company in that context, and what unexpected advantages came from doing it from the Valencian Community?

First of all, launching during the pandemic made it very easy to reach people and get them to take video calls, because everyone was stuck at home. In a very short time we were able to speak with dozens of experts and with people from a wide range of companies, agencies and institutes, who helped us and gave us the information we needed to define Arkadia Space's business model.

As for starting up in the Valencian Community, and specifically in Castellón, it is worth pointing out that none of the founders are from Castellón. But the moment we identified Castellón Airport as the location for our test center, there was a very clear consensus within the team: it was the perfect place for what we wanted to build.

Having an operational environment for engine testing, with room for industrial growth and a strategic location, was decisive in our decision to settle there.

Since then, the experience has been very positive. Castellón and the Valencian Community have given us a very favorable environment in which to grow, both industrially and institutionally. We have felt constant support, especially from Castellón Airport and from the Generalitat Valenciana, which has made several public funding instruments available to us that were key in the early stages of the project.

In hindsight, it was a very strategic decision. It allowed us to build testing and industrialization capabilities from day one, which are now a fundamental part of Arkadia and give us a competitive advantage over our competitors.

The industry talks a lot about launchers, constellations and payloads, but very little about propulsion. What do you think the industry (or investors) still fails to understand about the real strategic value of propulsion?

One of the main reasons is that propulsion is, after all, a subsystem: a component that forms part of the final system, whether that is the satellite or the launcher. Investors tend to prefer investing in the final system, because they assume that whoever provides the end service will have a bigger market and therefore a greater upside.

However, the reality is that propulsion is one of the most strategic technologies in the entire space value chain, and it cannot be treated as "just another component or subsystem." It is what enables mobility in orbit, mission flexibility and, ultimately, a large part of the operational value of satellites once they are in space.

This is increasingly well understood across the ecosystem, among both industry players and investors, especially as the sector matures and shifts from a focus on launch to a focus on in-orbit operations.

We are also showing that our technology is highly versatile and scalable, since we can serve different markets and applications, from launchers, space capsules and satellites to lunar landers. Propulsion typically accounts for between 10% and 30% of a space vehicle, which is far from negligible.

2. The EIC Accelerator milestone and growth strategy

The EIC Accelerator selected Arkadia from among more than 900 applications, securing up to €12.5 million in blended financing. Beyond the amount, what does this validation mean for your technical and commercial credibility in the global ecosystem?

The EIC Accelerator is, above all, an extremely competitive process. Being selected from among more than 900 applications across Europe is not just a matter of funding; it is a very strong validation on the technical, industrial and strategic levels.

Beyond the €12.5 million in blended financing, what really matters is what it means for our credibility. It is a clear signal that an institution like the European Commission believes our technology has real potential to become an industrial solution within the European space value chain.

It also has an important internal impact. It reinforces the message that what we are building is not just a promising technology, but an industrial capability that fits Europe's strategic priorities.

Futuro Perfecto supported you with the application. How did the strategic consulting influence the focus of your proposal and help you overcome the extreme competition at the EIC, especially in the final pitch stage in Brussels?

Having Futuro Perfecto by our side gave us a great deal of confidence throughout every phase of the process, and I would single out the final interview in Brussels in particular. The Futuro Perfecto team prepared several mock interviews for us, very seriously and with plenty of questions, creating a realistic atmosphere that meant we went into the interview very well prepared. The fact that they also shared typical questions with us, so that we could prepare for them in advance, gave us a lot of confidence on the day of the interview, and the result that day was very favorable.

The EIC Fund's investment is patient capital. How do you balance that long-term support with a commercial plan targeting markets as competitive as the United States and Asia?

Arkadia has two very clearly differentiated business lines: monopropellant propulsion and bipropellant propulsion. While the bipropellant technology has received EIC support and will mature over the coming years, since last year Arkadia has also had a business line already validated in orbit: the monopropellant technology. That has allowed us to penetrate the market, close contracts and advance our commercial activity in Europe. So far this year we have closed 4 commercial contracts and are about to close two more, all with European customers.

Now that we are validating the famous "product-market fit," we hope to expand our commercial horizons to the US and Asia with the monopropellant technology, while we continue to mature the bipropellant technology thanks to the EIC.

In 2025 you validated your DARK system in orbit. What did that milestone mean for the team, and what commercial doors did it open?

In the space sector, flight heritage is fundamental. Until a technology has flown and operated in real space conditions, commercial adoption is practically impossible. That is why we decided to push for this mission: precisely to validate the technology and build that confidence in the sector, so we could close our first commercial contracts.

The whole system was developed, tested, integrated and launched in about a year, which in space propulsion is a remarkably short time. That pace was only possible thanks to a very solid team, with very high technical capability and an enormous commitment at every stage of development.The launch with SpaceX was also an important milestone, not only because of the access to orbit, but because of the entire qualification and testing process required by a launch provider of that caliber. It is an extremely rigorous process that forces you to raise the technical standard of the system considerably.

On that mission, our partner D-Orbit played a key role as the , placing its trust in us and accompanying us throughout the entire process up to the flight.The results of the DARK system in orbit were very satisfactory. With this kind of technology, achieving correct performance on the first flight is very significant, and in our case it was a very strong validation of all the work that came before.

In that context, the commercial contracts based on the technology validated on DARK, such as the one we signed with Reflex Aerospace or the one we will soon announce with another German company, are a good example of how that kind of validation translates into real market opportunities.

3. Critical technology, market and competition

Your technology, the bipropellant thruster and the IONGRID™ system, promises to reduce emissions by up to 90% compared with hydrazine. What technical and regulatory challenges did you have to overcome so that green propulsion is also more competitive than traditional solutions?

In the world of green propulsion, we are the company offering the best efficiency, thanks to a combination of hydrogen peroxide and our hypergolic fuel, which translates into specific impulse. This means that Arkadia Space's bipropellant solution consumes less fuel than other green competitors.

In addition, compared with systems based on toxic propellants (the fuels used from the 1960s to today, based on hydrazines), our systems and fuels are much easier to handle and manage. Hydrazines are carcinogenic and therefore require protective equipment, safety procedures and facilities that make development, testing and even fuel-loading operations extremely expensive. That is not the case with Arkadia's fuels.

In fact, we can cut costs by up to 70% compared with traditional propulsion systems, while offering users greater safety, since there is no need for protective measures.

Finally, we have developed a hypergolic technology in our bipropellant engines, which means the propellants react spontaneously on contact, with no need for complex ignition systems.

This gives us a very fast engine response, with more precise and reliable maneuvers, which is key for controlling a satellite in orbit. Until now, no one in the world of green propulsion has managed to commercialize this, and it is what allows our technology to replace conventional propulsion systems that use toxic fuels.

You have signed contracts with major companies, with flights already planned for next year. Without revealing details, what kinds of missions or customers are gaining the most traction right now?

We are seeing traction across several types of missions, which confirms the versatility of our propulsion. On one side, we work with launch companies such as MaiaSpace, for whom we are developing the engines for the RCS (Reaction Control System) of their launcher, which require high reliability and precise control of pulse and thrust.

We are also entering more complex space vehicle programs, such as that of the French aerospace and defense giant Dassault Aviation, for which we are providing the complete RCS for its VORTEX-D space vehicle, where the technical and integration demands are especially high.

And in the satellite segment, we have signed with customers such as Reflex Aerospace, for whom we are providing a complete propulsion system for a mission of around 200 kg in LEO, based on the same architecture we already validated in orbit with DARK.

We will also soon announce contracts in the capsule market. So we can show that our technology addresses a very broad market.

4. Europe, technological sovereignty and geopolitics

Europe remains technologically dependent in propulsion, which you yourself have pointed to as a strategic vulnerability. What role can Arkadia play in building that European orbital sovereignty?

At the moment, not all the propulsion used in European missions is 100% European: we still use components or technology from outside Europe, mainly from the United States. The role Arkadia can play is precisely to help close part of that technological gap, by developing propulsion systems that are competitive globally but manufactured and validated within the continent. This is especially important in the current geopolitical context, in which even countries like the United States are restricting the use of certain products or services, something that could lead to a lack of technological capability or a slowdown in our technological growth.

With a team of 35 engineers, Arkadia is already a European benchmark. What additional policies or support frameworks does Europe need (beyond the EIC) to consolidate its leadership against the US and China?

We believe we still have a long way to go before becoming a European benchmark, although we want to be one and aspire to it. As for new policies or support frameworks, I think the European Commission, through initiatives such as the EIC or the ScaleUp fund, is currently helping European companies become world leaders in certain categories. However, we need more agility and more speed when it comes to closing large-scale contracts, where only big companies have a place. If we want to create champions, we have to give fast-growing companies the chance to bid for and win these large contracts, and at the same time reduce tendering times.

Deep tech is experiencing a growing convergence between defense investment and commercial applications. How does Arkadia see the evolution of the dual-use model, and how is defense investment affecting the development of capabilities such as orbital propulsion?

In the space sector and in dual use, propulsion is a strategic capability: it lets you move faster and gives you the capacity to detect, monitor and even deter a threat. With the current geopolitical situation, in which countries such as China and Russia are carrying out disconcerting maneuvers around high-value satellites, equipping satellites with propulsion so they can understand the situation in space is a strategic, high-value capability. That is why we expect propulsion to become significantly more important in the coming years in the world where defense and space converge.

5. Leadership, team and culture

Founding and leading a deep tech company is very different from being a great engineer. What has been the hardest part of the transition from engineer to CEO?

Not knowing what you are supposed to do at any given moment. There is no guide, no manual for how to do things, so you tend to feel quite lost and, at the same time, to question whether you are doing it right. The best thing is to surround yourself with people in the same situation and listen to their experiences, what they have learned and their lessons learned. That way you feel more comfortable and better prepared.

Building such a specialized team from Castellón is not trivial. What do you look for in the people who join Arkadia, and what kind of talent is hardest to find today?

For us, the challenge is not just finding technical talent, but making sure that talent fits with the way we work, with our corporate culture and our values.With senior talent, the difficulty is greater. It is a profile in very high demand internationally and, given their careers, they tend to be less flexible about changing location or relocating to places like Castellón. Even so, we are seeing more and more interest, and in some specific cases we have managed to attract highly experienced people who bring enormous value to the team.Beyond experience, what we value most is attitude, the drive to build and, above all, alignment with the company's culture. From the beginning we have built a culture strongly oriented toward teamwork, shared responsibility and direct involvement in developing the technology.

You have said you want to be the European benchmark in propulsion. When and how will you know you have achieved it?

For us, being a European benchmark in propulsion will mean several things at once: that our systems are flying on a recurring basis in relevant missions, that international customers trust our technology for increasingly critical programs, and that we have demonstrated the industrial capacity to scale up and deliver reliably. To put it in concrete terms, we would love to be able to say that we play a relevant role in European lunar exploration missions where Arkadia provides the propulsion, that our RCS systems are present on the major launchers, both European and American, or that we are capable of producing more than one hundred propulsion systems a year.

Looking ahead to 2035: where do you see Arkadia, and what role will green propulsion play in the space economy?

We are leaders in orbital propulsion in Europe and one of the 4 most relevant propulsion companies worldwide, a strategic propulsion supplier in the major international programs, from the Moon and the LEO economy with astronauts and space stations to, why not, Mars exploration!

What would you say to a 25-year-old aerospace engineer torn between a large corporation and betting on New Space?

I would tell them it is not a question of better or worse, but of what they want to learn and how they want to grow over the next few years.

In a large corporation you will find very established structures, well-defined processes and large-scale projects. In New Space, especially in startups, the dynamic is very different: there is much more individual responsibility from the start, more direct exposure to critical decisions and a much steeper learning curve.

In a startup, one year can be worth several in another environment, not because the work is better or worse, but because the intensity, the variety of challenges and the closeness to the entire development cycle greatly accelerate professional growth.

6. Ecosystem, partners and Futuro Perfecto

To close, let's talk about the ecosystem. What role do partners, such as Futuro Perfecto, play in accelerating critical technologies like yours?

A fundamental one. At the end of the day, we know our technology, and we have less time to put together proposals or prepare for interviews like the final pitch in Brussels. Knowing that we have a partner who specializes in that specific area saves us time on the one hand, and on the other gives us confidence that we will achieve the goal, in this case winning the EIC Accelerator!

And looking to the future: what does Spanish deep tech need for cases like Arkadia to be the norm rather than the exception?

It sounds like a cliché, but it needs a lot more money. Deep tech requires hardware, and hardware requires capex and patient capital, which translates into specialized investment. We need a different investment culture, one that better understands the advantages of deep tech as well as what investing in it entails and its particular nature. Reports such as LakeStar's on deep tech can help educate the sector.