Stories about how space companies are raising money to take on next-gen missions.
Tired: rockets Wired: fully reusable single-stage-to orbit, horizontal-takeoff-and-landing spaceplane That, in a not-so-concise nutshell, is the driving force behind Renton, WA-based Radian Aerospace. After six years, the startup finally emerged from stealth Wednesday to announce its spaceplane ambitions and a $27.5M seed round. One part rocket science and another part going where no company has gone before, Radian […]
PitchBook and NVCA have released their Q4 ’21 Venture Monitor. If there’s one thing that’s evident, it’s that VCs had plenty to be happy about last year: Deal value for US startups nearly doubled year-over-year to $330B. Public listings, SPACs, and M&A activity drove over $680B in exit value (nearly 3x the previous record). VC fundraising […]
STOKE Space Technologies announced this morning that it has raised a $65M Series A. The Seattle space startup is developing a fully reusable rocket. Breakthrough Energy Ventures led the round, which was joined by new investors Spark Capital, Point72 Ventures, Toyota Ventures, Alameda Research, and Global Founders Capital. Existing investors who also joined: NFX, MaC […]
Loft Orbital, an SF-based space infrastructure-as-a-service startup, has announced a $140M fundraising round led by BlackRock, with participation from CEAS Investments, Foundation Capital, Uncork Capital, Ubiquity VC, and others. Loft 101: The startup abstracts away the complexity of going to space by handling payload integration, satellite launches, regulatory compliance, ground stations, data transmission, and on-orbit […]
Last week, London startup Satellite Vu closed a £15 million ($20.7 million) Series A, led by Seraphim. Satellite Vu, which raised a ~$5 million seed earlier this year, now has enough capital to finance production of its first satellite. Also participating in the Series A: Draper Esprit, A/O PropTech, Ridgeline Ventures, Earth Science Foundation, E2MC Ventures, […]
Airbus Ventures announced this morning that it’s invested in ispace. The moon exploration startup was one of five finalists in Lunar XPRIZE, Google’s $30M lander competition. While no team ultimately won the grand prize, the competition was still successful in kicking off a wave of privately funded companies who have their sights set on the moon. Meet ispace. Headquartered […]
t’s already been a banner year for VCs and we still have three months to go. That’s the takeaway from the Venture Monitor report, published by PitchBook and NVCA this morning. Let’s break out the “space tech” investment data. Since 2016, space tech has accounted for ~1.2% of all VC funding. That proportion jumps around in quite […]
This morning, Spaced Ventures (SV) announced a $1.2 million seed round led by WorldQuant Ventures. Founded one year ago, the startup recently opened its space crowdfunding platform to the public in beta mode. SV will use the new capital to scale its crowdfunding offering and launch a new product for accredited investors. “There’s been this old narrative […]
Space Capital has published its quarterly report tracking private investment in the space sector. Investors put roughly $8.7 billion to work in Q3 2021, backing a total of 112 space companies. In Q3, while the lion’s share of money went to growth- and late-stage companies, smaller startups pulled in $1.5 billion and represented 59% of all deals closed. NB: Space […]
