Encore Technologies backs Solstar's orbital comms push with $1m bet

A Canadian tech firm channels a private placement into space communications infrastructure, betting on persistent orbital connectivity as a foundational layer.

By Disrupts Editorial Team Thu, 9 July 2026

Three large white radio telescopes and two smaller white buildings with solar panels are spread across a dry, grassy plain with distant mountains under a clear blue sky.

Encore Technologies Corp., a Vancouver-listed intelligent infrastructure company trading on the Canadian Securities Exchange, has signed a binding term sheet to invest US$1 million in Solstar Space Company, a US-based orbital communications firm whose Deke Space Communicator is already operating on-orbit. To fund the deal, Encore is running a concurrent non-brokered private placement targeting up to C$1.4 million at C$0.26 per share. The transaction frames space-based connectivity not as a speculative moonshot but as critical infrastructure, a framing that is gaining traction across multiple capital markets simultaneously.

Solstar's Deke device launched aboard a Momentus Vigoride 7 mission via SpaceX's Falcon 9 in March 2026. Co-passengers on that mission include NASA and DARPA, alongside a commercial space data-centre operator, a detail that quietly underscores how rapidly orbital infrastructure is becoming a multi-sector concern, drawing in defence agencies, civil science bodies, and commercial cloud providers within a single payload manifest.

Small cheque, significant signal

The deal is structured as a secured convertible loan at 10% per annum, maturing in five years, with conversion rights triggered by financing events, liquidity transactions, or maturity. The conversion price is set at a 25% discount to the applicable transaction price or based on a fully diluted pre-money valuation cap of US$14 million, whichever is lower. That cap makes Solstar a micro-cap play by any measure, but the strategic logic is less about the current valuation and more about positioning ahead of what Encore describes as "a critical 24-month window" in orbital communications buildout.

Stephen Kukucha, Encore's CEO, framed the investment in infrastructure terms rather than space-sector hype: "Communications infrastructure will be a critical component of the next generation of intelligent systems, both on Earth and in space." Brian Barnett, Solstar's CEO, pointed toward lunar ambitions alongside near-Earth applications, noting the company's roadmap extends to "Earth orbit and on the Moon."

The convergence angle: orbital comms meets terrestrial intelligent infrastructure

The broader significance of this transaction sits at the intersection of three converging trends that Disrupts readers will recognise across their portfolios.

First, space-based communications infrastructure is rapidly becoming a contested layer of the global connectivity stack. With LEO satellite constellations scaling and on-orbit data-centre concepts advancing, reliable inter-spacecraft and spacecraft-to-ground communications are no longer optional add-ons, they are the enabling condition for everything from autonomous orbital manufacturing to real-time Earth-observation analytics. Solstar's Deke platform is designed to address exactly this bottleneck.

Second, the co-passenger list on the Vigoride 7 mission, NASA, DARPA, and a commercial space data-centre operator, is a microcosm of the demand structure forming around orbital connectivity. Defence and civil agencies need persistent comms for situational awareness and telemetry; commercial operators need it to monetise on-orbit compute and storage. That dual-use demand profile makes the sector attractive to capital allocators seeking exposure across both government-contract revenue and commercial growth curves.

Third, Encore's own positioning as an "intelligent infrastructure" company points toward a longer-term convergence thesis: that terrestrial connectivity infrastructure (edge compute, sensor networks, distributed data systems) and space-based connectivity will increasingly be designed and operated as a single, integrated stack rather than separate domains. If that thesis proves correct, early positions in orbital communications hardware and services could represent the equivalent of holding fibre-route rights before the broadband build-out.

For cross-sector investors, the Encore-Solstar deal is worth watching less for its current scale and more as a leading indicator. Junior capital markets in Canada have historically served as early-stage price-discovery venues for resource and frontier-tech plays before institutional capital scales them. The question for macro allocators is whether orbital communications infrastructure follows a similar adoption curve to terrestrial fibre or satellite broadband, and whether the DARPA and NASA co-presence on Deke's first orbital mission accelerates that timeline materially.