Northwood Space is attempting to build the world’s largest ground-station network, and now it has a massive pool of capital to fund its buildout.
Today, Northwood announced the closing of $375M Series C, valuing the company at $2B, and bringing its total capital raised to $500M+.
a16z and DFJ Growth co-led the round, which included additional participation from Alpine Space Ventures, Washington Harbour Partners, Stepstone Activate, In-Q-Tel and others. Alongside the round, Northwood also secured a separate multi-year credit facility from HSBC Innovation Banking of undisclosed value.
Land expansion: The round will help Northwood expand its team, and deploy antennas at more ground stations around the world.
“With the largest ground networks today, you have hundreds of sites, and so in terms of what is immediately in the horizon for us: We plan to reach that and surpass that,” CEO Bridgit Mendler told reporters during a press call on Friday.
The Series C comes less than nine months after Northwood closed a $100M Series B, which has already funded significant expansion.
- In January, the company announced a three-year $49.8M contract with the Space Force to support the military’s Satellite Control Network, and Northwood has been delivering ground links from satellites in GEO under this contract.
- In June, Northwood unveiled Prism, a new parabolic dish designed for multi-gigabit links, and laid out a plan to grow its network to rival terrestrial Internet peering exchanges.
- In August, the company opened a 185,000 sq. ft. facility in Torrance, CA to support an increased production capacity for hundreds of ground antennas—across two product lines—per year.
I am speed: Unlike the hardware at traditional ground station sites, Northwood’s tech is designed to quickly deploy, and offer greater data links with a smaller physical footprint. In a recent test, Northwood arrayed 10 of its Portal ground antennas to achieve the same performance of a 20-foot dish.
Northwood’s antennas are also standardized and modular, allowing ground sites to expand quickly as capacity needs increase. As Northwood demonstrated, its hardware can be packed into standard freight containers, shipped anywhere the world, and turned on hours after arriving.
The speed allows Northwood to stand up new ground station sites in months—far quicker than industry standard. Northwood is also able to support satellite links through an API—so satellite operators can quickly reserve capacity.
Ultimately, Northwood’s aim is to standardize the entire network stack surrounding ground stations, so companies and defense users can benefit from a large network of shared infrastructure that can expand quickly.
“Our mental model is how can we go from the custom couch version of the world to the IKEA couch version of the world,” Mendler said. “Northwood is building the IKEA couches that you can ship out really easily and quickly.”
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The first rule of Debt Club: You do not talk about Debt Club.
Telesat CEO Dan Goldberg stuck to it on Thursday’s Q3 earnings call, telling analysts the company was “pretty constrained” in what it could say about refinancing its legacy GEO debt.
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