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Pekka Laurila and Rafał Modrzewski
EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™ 2026 finalists, Finland and Poland
Pekka Laurila, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer, ICEYE, Finland and Rafał Modrzewski, CEO, ICEYE, Poland
Pekka Laurila and Rafał Modrzewski are rethinking radar satellites to deliver critical intelligence.
Pekka Laurila and Rafał Modrzewski embody a rare entrepreneurial partnership: two founders from different countries who undertook a transformative mission — democratizing access to objective, near real time information about the Earth. They believed that space technology could reshape how humanity understands and manages a rapidly changing world.
Their journeys converged in Finland. While studying at Aalto University, Pekka immersed himself in the student satellite program, where he discovered both the technical promise and societal value of space based sensing. Rafał, raised in Poland with a passion for physics and engineering, joined a small satellite team during an academic exchange program and recognized the untapped potential of radar technology.
Pekka and Rafał cofounded ICEYE in Helsinki in 2014, pioneering miniaturized synthetic aperture radar (SAR) microsatellites that package high performance radar into compact, software defined spacecraft. This breakthrough lowered the cost and accelerated deployment to deliver sovereign intelligence with exceptional resolution, low latency and frequent revisits — independent of weather or lighting conditions.
Today, Pekka steers strategy, customer relationships and scalable business models, and Rafał leads technical innovation and execution as they help build resilient infrastructure for the modern world. ICEYE provides turnkey sovereign missions for governments operating their own constellations, while supplying SAR intelligence for defense and security, maritime monitoring, disaster response and recovery, and insurance and corporate risk management. As of January 2026, ICEYE has successfully launched 64 satellites and operates globally with nearly 1,000 employees across nine countries.
There has never been a better time for a small team to have a global impact. Pick a problem you actually care about solving and be ready to move fast and adapt as you learn.
As the company grew, the weight of what we do at ICEYE became very real. When your technology directly contributes to protecting people, you stop thinking about business in abstract terms.