True Anomaly closed a $260M Series C to increase its headcount, ramp up its production capacity, and support future missions to GEO and cislunar space.
Accel led the round, which included participation from Meritech Capital, Eclipse, Riot Ventures, Menlo Ventures, 645 Ventures, ACME Capital, Space VC, Champion Hill Ventures and Narya. The round also included debt financing through Stifel Bank.
True Anomaly CEO Even Rogers declined to share specifics on the split between debt and equity financing, but said the vast majority of funding came from investors.
On the hunt: Since its founding in 2022, the company has raised $400M+ on its potential to capture large contracts central to the DoD’s commercialization efforts.
- True Anomaly won a $30M contract from SSC as part of the VICTUS HAZE Tactically Responsive Space (TacRS) mission to demonstrate RPO capabilities in orbit.
- The company was selected by the Space Force’s Space Rapid Capabilities Office to develop ground-systems software, as part of a $1B IDIQ contract involving several firms.
- True Anomaly also built a team of ex-DoD officials in an effort to secure more government contracts, most recently with the appointment of Frank Calvelli—the DoD’s former acquisition chief—to the company’s board.
Opportunities for True Anomaly are only growing. This week, Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, the Space Force’s top buyer, put forward a new acquisition plan to replace the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) constellation with commercial alternatives.
True Anomaly has pre-positioned itself to meet the military’s upgrade requirements for GEO, with its Jackal program. These sats have high Delta V and onboard compute capabilities to offer US warfighters an edge in space.
“When we originally sat down to design Jackal, we had this exact mission set in mind. So, in many ways, Jackal was purpose-built for the GEO SDA problem,” Rogers told Payload. “Traditional spacecraft don’t have the performance envelope that’s required for warfighting. We started with that warfighting set of requirements, and built Jackals from there.”
Adding to the litter: While the company has only sent three of its Jackal satellites to LEO so far, its goal is to take on higher and higher orbits with Jackal missions to GEO and cislunar space as soon as next year.
On the production front, the company is using the Series C funds to invest in labor and machinery to produce Jackals at scale. True Anomaly is also developing new payloads and platforms specifically geared towards contested space operations.
