Katrin Bacic

Bio

Katrin Bacic is CEO of the German space startup UNIO. In her role, she leads the development of Europe's first commercial satellite constellation, focusing on automotive and broader mobility applications.
Previously, she was Managing Director and Head of Strategy at Wayra Germany, where she headed all startup programmes from 2018 to 2023. As the innovation and investment unit of the telecommunications group Telefónica, Wayra is the world's largest corporate accelerator. Prior to this, Katrin Bacic spent more than 13 years in various management positions at Telefónica, mainly in business development and innovation. Besides Germany, she has lived and worked in Spain and Hong Kong.
As a public speaker, mentor, and author, as well as a member of various juries, she advocates for diversity in the startup and tech ecosystem.
Explaining her fascination with space, Katrin Bacic states: "Whether it's business, science or society in general. Almost every aspect of life on Earth is being fundamentally transformed by space technologies. This is especially true for connectivity. And a sovereign Europe needs its own space communications infrastructure. We want to spearhead this effort."
UNIO Enterprise GmbH
UNIO is a new-space system provider founded in Munich in 2022. UNIO's goal is to build Europe's first sovereign, commercial satellite constellation for fast, powerful, and secure connectivity with an initial focus on the mobility sector. In the European automotive sector alone, the market volume for satellite communication is estimated at around 14 billion euros by 2030.
UNIO has the pole position to address this demand: as a joint venture between Isar Aerospace (the manufacturer of Europe's most versatile small payload launcher), Reflex Aerospace (Europe's first venture-capital funded satellite manufacturer), Mynaric (the global pioneer in scaling laser communications) and SES (the world's leading satellite operator and content connectivity provider), UNIO is currently the only company to combine the expertise of leading players from all core areas critical to satellite communications.
Looking ahead, UNIO’s first demo satellite is to be launched into space as early as 2024. The first commercial services are planned for 2027.