Kepler Communications Inc. is an international satellite telecommunications company based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with presence in the UK and the USA.^[1] The company's stated mission is to create the internet for space and allow-in-space communications for the future space economy.^[2][3] It has also worked on building a satellite network for IoT communication systems.

Kepler Communications was founded in 2015 by four graduate students from the University of Toronto, who previously worked together on various design projects through the University of Toronto Aerospace Team. The startup was incubated at University of Toronto's Entrepreneurship Hatchery, the Creative Destruction Lab, Ryerson University's (now Toronto Metropolitan University) DMZ, and was part of the Techstars Seattle 2016 cohort.The company is named in honour of Johannes Kepler, a pioneer in the discovery of the way in which objects in space interact. He is best known for his Laws of Planetary Motion.^{[citation needed]}

Kepler was able to raise $5M in a seed round financing at Techstars, and in the span of 12 months was able to take KIPP from design to orbit. In 2018, the company successfully completed their Series A financing round, raising a total of $16M USD. The round was led by Costanoa Ventures, with participation by Deutsche Bahn’s (DB) Digital Ventures as a strategic investor.It was followed by Series B funding, in which the company raised around US $60M, led by Tribe Capital in 2021.^[2][3] In April 2023, Kepler announced a successful Series C funding round of US $92 million, bringing its total amount of equity raised to over US $200 million. The round is led by IA Ventures and also backed by Costanoa Ventures, Canaan Partners, Tribe Capital, BDC Capital’s Industrial Innovation Venture Fund, and others.^[4][5]

The company started as a builder of a shoebox-sized satellites constellation based on the CubeSat standard to deliver connectivity to other satellites and ground-based stations, allowing for near real-time exchange of data from IoT devices, large scale data backhaul (store-and-forward) services, and ultimately command and control for other space-based assets.

With its Series B funding round, the company started establishing its presence in the United States of America in 2018.^[2]Kepler Communication shifted its focus from IoT to optical constellation technology in 2020 and began to provide Internet connectivity for space-generated data and communications for in-space assets. Since its switch to integrated optical technology, the company has been using its Gen-2 satellites, which are bigger than previous CubeSat standards and weigh over 100 kilograms.^[4]

Kepler uses optical as its key technology for building space communication networks. Its test satellites, KIPP, CASE, and TARS, were constructed by Glasgow-based AAC.^[6] Kepler then started to develop its operational satellites in-house. In 2022, the company signed a contract with Germany’s Tesat-Spacecom to build an in-space communication network with its laser communication terminals.^[7] In addition, Kepler Communications began its partnership with Houston-based AXIOM Space and Broomfield-based Skyloom Global to initiate Optical Inter-Satellite Links (OISLs) in the following year. Through the partnership, Kepler will participate in the transformation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) into a global space marketplace in the future.^[8][9]