Finance

Inversion has raised $44 million in Series A funding to back its plans for cargo delivery to Earth’s “toughest spots”, from space. The funding round was co-led by Spark Capital and Adjacent, with participation from Lockheed Martin Ventures, Kindred Ventures, and Y Combinator. It brings the Los Angeles startup’s total funding to $54 million, following an earlier $10 million seed ...

Anduril Industries, an American defense technology company, has won a $99.7 million contract to the modernise the U.S. Space Surveillance Network (SSN). The SSN tracks objects in space such as debris and both active and inactive satellites. The contract was awarded by U.S. Space Systems Command. Anduril will be using its “Lattice” product, with a mesh networking capability. This will ...

Gitai USA, the space robotics startup, has raised $15.5 million in its latest Series B Extension round, which is the third it has held. With previous rounds raising $30m in May 2023 and $15m in August 2023, it brings the total in Series B Extension rounds to $60.5M. The lead investor in the latest funding round was Maezawa Fund. This ...

Firefly Aerospace has raised $175 million in Series D funding to develop its Alpha rocket and Elytra orbital vehicle. This now values the company at more than $2 billion. The Texas-based launch and in-space services provider reports that the Series D investment round was oversubscribed. The company is a self-styled “end-to-end space transportation company”. Its launch vehicles include Alpha (for ...

The Exploration Company (TEC) has raised $160 million in a Series B funding round. The startup is developing Nyx, a reusable and in-orbit refillable spacecraft for transporting space cargo. Designed to be launched from any heavy launcher in the world, the craft would fly to space stations. Investors included Plural, Balderton Capital, NGP Capital and Bessemer. And TEC described the ...

TSMC and the US Department of Commerce have finalised their previously announced preliminary agreement that TSMC should receive $6.6 billion of Chips Act money plus €5 billion in loans and a 25% tax credit on infrastructure capex to support the $65 billion investment it is making in three fabs in Arizona. “This is the largest foreign direct investment in a ...

Cambridge fabless semiconductor company, Forefront RF, has secured £16m series A funding. Octopus Ventures and Cambridge Innovation Capital have joined existing backers BGF and Foresight Group to provide investment to prepare for the launch of its first product, the FFM51010, for the cellular enabled smartwatch market. Established in 2020, the startup’s patented Foretune technology is based on founder Dr Leo ...

OroraTech has successfully closed its €25 million Series B funding round to boost its predictive AI capabilities and orbital sensor network. The Munich-based company, which describes itself as world leader in wildfire intelligence, uses infrared sensors in space to collate data and analytics. Predictive algorithm data fed by its infrared thermal satellite network, enables third parties to better respond to ...

A “Design to Deliver” programme has been launched to support companies using space-enabled data and services for the benefit of the environment. This would be to generate information that is “trusted and actionable” and fuel “responsible behaviours towards nature”. For example, this could involve applications involving Earth Observation, satcoms, or sensing, whether for IoT or the use of drones, etc. ...

Seraphim Space, the space-focused VC, has announced the 11 startups that will feature in its latest accelerator programme, Mission 14. Applications addressed companies include biodiversity monitoring, AI robotics, solar cells, internet services, SaaS AI, digital twin technology – all involving, to some extent, space or space-based technology. Mission 14 The eleven selected are: Acquora – (Chile) Artemis Earth Ltd – ...