The largest single financing: Investments in a domestic laser communication dark horse were made in Beijing and Guangzhou.

The enthusiasm in the capital market at the beginning of the year was once again ignited by Elon Musk.

First, he announced a shocking application for the industry: planning to deploy and operate up to 1 million satellites. Immediately afterwards, he announced that SpaceX would fully acquire xAI, aiming to create the most ambitious vertical integration innovation engine for space - terrestrial integration in history. This deal also successfully combined the two hottest concepts since 2025, AI and commercial spaceflight.

Looking at the situation in China, the National Space Administration established the Commercial Spaceflight Department and issued the "Action Plan for Promoting the High - quality and Safe Development of Commercial Spaceflight (2025 - 2027)", systematically deploying the development path. The 15th Five - Year Plan also clearly proposed to accelerate the construction of a space - power country, and the top - level design of the industry has been continuously improved. Meanwhile, the plan to launch over 10,000 low - orbit satellites from 2026 to 2030 has further accelerated the maturity of the market.

However, with the surge in the number of low - orbit satellites, new problems have emerged. In space, how can massive data be transmitted quickly? Currently, space laser communication is becoming the best solution. At the same time, in the investment field, there is an increasingly clear consensus that it is no longer a good time to enter the fields of whole satellites and whole rockets. Correspondingly, industrial supporting and core component manufacturers have become the next gold - mining areas for capital.

Touzhongwang learned that on February 6, Beijing Polar Star Communication Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Polar Star Communication"), a manufacturer focusing on space laser communication, announced the completion of its Series A4 financing, with a financing amount of nearly 300 million RMB. This financing also refreshed the record for the largest single - round financing in domestic space laser communication.

It is reported that this round of financing will be mainly used for the R & D and iteration of a new generation of space laser communication products, the construction of automated production lines, and the upgrade of on - orbit technology verification capabilities.

"Laying Optical Fibers in the Sky"

Wu Shaojun, the founder of Polar Star Communication, was a space scientific researcher within the system before starting his business.

Public information shows that Wu Shaojun graduated from Beihang University. He has been deeply involved in the fields of circuits and systems, information and signal processing, and has obtained a master's and a doctor's degree respectively. During this period, he has been engaged in the development of aerospace products, successively serving as a researcher at the China Academy of Space Technology and the chief designer of a model, and has presided over many major national special projects such as the "Manned Space Station Application Information System".

In 2020, acutely aware of the historic opportunity of the global commercial spaceflight explosion, Wu Shaojun resolutely left the system and plunged into the wave of entrepreneurship in China's commercial spaceflight, founding a commercial spaceflight technology company - Polar Star Communication. In his words, "I used to work within the system, with a senior professional title, teaching students and presiding over scientific research projects. It was a stable, decent and well - paid job. Many people might choose to stay there steadily, but I still decided to start my own business."

In addition to the well - known Starlink project, in this year, the commercial spaceflight industry reached a consensus that to build a low - orbit constellation of tens of thousands of satellites, laser links are the only technical means capable of supporting inter - satellite data transmission above Gbps, which directly led to laser communication becoming the "standard configuration" for satellites.

More realistically, in early 2020, the "Shijian 20" satellite refreshed the world record at that time with a rate of 10 Gbps. Soon after, the National Development and Reform Commission included "satellite Internet" in the "new infrastructure" for the first time. In August of the same year, domestic inter - satellite laser communication achieved a zero - breakthrough when the "Xingyun 2" 01 and 02 satellites successfully established a two - way laser communication link.

Therefore, since 2020, the competition in the laser communication field has not only been pure scientific research but has shifted to "intuitive, lightweight, and mass - producible" commercial competition.

Polar Star Communication, founded at this time, can be said to have precisely caught the wave of the explosive demand for laser communication. In addition to the founder, the core technical team of Polar Star Communication comes from institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, Huawei, and ZTE. The technical backbones have served as core key positions such as the chief designer and deputy chief designer of aerospace model tasks and have participated in major engineering projects such as the "Tiangong 2", the "Micius", and the ultra - wideband laser payload of the space station as core members.

According to the official statement, Polar Star Communication takes "bringing the space network into the optical era" as its mission, is committed to providing customers with "affordable and high - quality space laser communication products", and continuously promotes the construction of space - terrestrial integrated optical communication network infrastructure.

We know that in ground communication, 4G and 5G base stations are connected by optical fibers, but satellites move at high speed in space, and it is impossible to lay optical cables. To enable these "space base stations" to achieve stable communication, Polar Star Communication is "laying optical fibers in the sky" to truly connect these "space base stations" into a communication network.

Simply put, what they do is to develop the core equipment that enables high - speed interconnection between satellites - the on - board laser communication terminal (LCT). This "laser transceiver" that can be installed on satellites allows satellites to have high - speed and stable "conversations" using laser beams.

However, different from ground communication, satellites communicate while in motion, which requires extremely high stability and precise tracking and aiming capabilities. The laser communication distance can reach 2,000 - 5,000 kilometers. At such a long distance, aiming the laser beam at the receiving end of the opposite satellite is like "threading a needle from a thousand miles away", which places extremely high requirements on the pointing control accuracy and optical stability of the system. This is also the core competitiveness of Polar Star Communication's technology.

Rapid Commercialization, Business Scale Reaching Hundreds of Millions of Yuan

Like commercial spaceflight, China's laser communication also faces the dilemma of a late start. From an international comparison, as of early 2026, SpaceX's Starlink has deployed more than 20,000 laser communication terminals in orbit, while the number in China is still in the hundreds. It can be seen that the domestic capacity is far from saturated, and there is even a situation of "insufficient production capacity to meet the needs of large - scale infrastructure construction".

The reason lies in the high technical threshold. Different from ground communication equipment, laser communication terminals must pass on - orbit verification to be recognized by customers. For this reason, Wu Shaojun led the team to self - finance 50 million RMB to independently develop and launch two technical experimental satellites - the "Polar Constellation 01/02" for on - orbit testing.

This move follows SpaceX's concept of "using competitions as training", that is, on - orbit testing and rapid iteration. This method also ensures that each generation of Polar Star Communication's products has undergone about one year of on - orbit flight verification before being delivered to customers.

Starting from technology verification, Polar Star Communication has successively launched a variety of on - board terminal products, airborne and ground terminal products for laser communication, built a fully independent technical system of "optics, mechanics, electricity, heat, software, and communication", and covered the R & D and production capabilities in all technical directions of laser communication products.

Of course, the application of laser communication is not limited to the scenario of inter - satellite communication. In addition to traditional satellite - ground transmission, transmission and networking between aircraft/drones and satellites, transmission and networking between ships, and deep - space exploration, the hottest applications in the past two years have been space computing power and 6G communication.

First, to directly deploy computing resources on orbital satellites, it is necessary to form a distributed supercomputer with tens of thousands of computing satellites through inter - satellite laser links. Data is generated, processed, and the results are output in space, and the key conclusions are transmitted back to the earth, completely changing the ground - based computing model of "front - store and back - factory".

However, it is not easy to achieve this, but in reality, this process is indeed accelerating. The merger of SpaceX and xAI mentioned at the beginning is the latest evidence of the accelerated promotion of space computing power. Elon Musk believes that in the next two to three years, space will become the place with the lowest cost for generating AI computing power. This cost advantage alone is enough to drive innovative enterprises to train AI models and process data at an unprecedented speed and scale, accelerating the process of human understanding of physical laws and the invention of inclusive technologies.

Second, from the perspective of the technological evolution path, 6G is no longer a single upgrade of the ground cellular network but an all - domain information infrastructure form oriented towards space - air - ground integration, deeply integrating satellite networks, sensing systems, computing capabilities, and artificial intelligence. In this context, key technologies with real - space environment verification capabilities and the ability to form an engineering closed - loop are becoming important supports in the construction of the 6G system. And laser communication can precisely eliminate signal blind spots in areas without base stations such as oceans and deserts.

For Polar Star Communication, more than 80% of its resources are still focused on the on - board direction. On the one hand, the on - board business has higher technical difficulty and greater added value; on the other hand, the construction of the country's low - orbit satellite infrastructure has entered a critical stage, which is the most core and certain market opportunity at present.

Local State - owned Capital Enters the Market, Competing for the Foundation of Commercial Spaceflight

Let's return to this financing.

This is another round of financing completed by Polar Star Communication after last August. Since May 2025, Polar Star Communication has accumulated nearly 500 million RMB in financing, and multiple local capitals have been introduced behind it.

This round of financing was jointly participated in by Beijing Information Industry Fund, Yuekai Capital, Shengjing Jiacheng, Yuanyi Investment, Yunhui Capital, Shenwan Hongyuan, and Huacheng Venture Capital. Judging from the composition of the investors, among these seven institutions, there are local state - owned capitals, industrial capitals, securities firms, and first - tier financial investment institutions, showing diversification, which also indicates that capitals with different backgrounds have begun to bet on the commercial spaceflight track.

However, the most active in the layout are local governments. Currently, industrial clusters mainly in Beijing, the Yangtze River Delta (Changzhou, Shanghai), and the Guangdong - Hong Kong - Macao Greater Bay Area are becoming the "habitats" for technology implementation.

For example, Changzhou has precisely targeted the commercial spaceflight track. Through policy empowerment and industrial chain agglomeration, it has attracted a number of core laser communication enterprises such as Xingyao Guangyu to settle in, forming a complete chain from high - end materials, core components to system payloads.

There is also Taizhou. Taian City has formulated plans such as the "Taian Commercial Spaceflight Industry Development Action Plan (2024 - 2026)" and established the working idea of "seizing the two key points of satellite Internet construction and launch vehicle manufacturing". More specifically, Taian City has established a future industry fund worth 630 million RMB relying on municipal state - owned enterprises and attracted leading commercial spaceflight enterprises to settle in through equity cooperation and other methods.

Looking at Beijing, it has directly injected capital into leading enterprises by establishing a commercial spaceflight industry investment fund. A relevant person in charge of the Beijing Information Industry Fund said, "As a key transmission link for achieving efficient interconnection of the space - terrestrial integrated network, space laser communication has an irreplaceable strategic significance for the layout of the country's information infrastructure. The Beijing municipal government investment fund has provided multi - round equity investment to continuously support the development of Polar Star Communication."

From a more detailed perspective, not long ago, Helium Starlight and Bi Yi Laser, which are in the same track as Polar Star Communication, successively announced the completion of a new round of financing. Among them, the Series A1 financing of Helium Starlight was nearly 200 million RMB, jointly invested by Meishan Huantian Industrial Development Group, Luxin Venture Capital Baoding Electric Valley Fund, Hebei Coastal Industrial Investment Fund, Zhongshan Venture Capital, Zhongyimingyuan, etc. Judging from the investors, local state - owned capitals accounted for the majority.

Meanwhile, Hangzhou Aerospace Dongfanghong Laser Communication Co., Ltd., under the Fifth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, started preparations as early as 2025 and was officially unveiled in early 2026. This is a "national team" focusing on the R & D and industrialization of core laser communication technologies and is also a key move by Hangzhou's Xihu District in the aerospace field.

Since 2026, the expectations placed on commercial spaceflight have been getting higher and higher. Behind the scramble of local governments to layout is the support for an industry as important as artificial intelligence, the desire to seize the new wave of historical opportunities, and more directly, it is a key point in the competition among major powers.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Dongshisi Tiao Capital", author: Zhang Xue, published by 36Kr with authorization.