Electronics Weekly
The funding round was led by Tikehau Capital with Axial Partners as a co-lead. Joining them were new investors Temasek, Supernova, Tribeca Venture Partners, Starburst VC, Arkenstone Partners, and GSBackers. And existing investors involved included Bpifrance, Foundation Capital, and Uncork Capital.
“This round gives us the fuel to meet this challenge and build a durable, trusted commercial space company,” said founders Pierre-Damien Vaujour and Alex Greenberg. They say they will scale from launching a handful of satellites per year to 10+.
They will also be “growing our ecosystem of AI application partners and making it seamless and eventually self-serve for anyone to deploy and run AI apps on Loft’s infrastructure”.
Loft Orbital
The founders of the company say Loft is reaching “fleet scale” as it crosses $500m of lifetime bookings. It’s customers include NASA, Microsoft, BAE Systems, the US Space Force, CNES, and the ESA.
The company, using a standardised satellite platform it has developed, handles the process of deploying and operating space infrastructure on a customer’s behalf.
Its products – the Hub and Cockpit – are described as hardware and software abstractions. This is to de-couple the customer’s payload (a specific mission) from the underlying satellite.
As well as San Francisco, it has offices in Golden, Colorado, and Toulouse. It was founded in 2017.
Image: Loft Orbital – Loft Co-founders Pierre-Damien Vaujour and Alex Greenberg help Golden mayor, Laura Weinberg cut the ribbon for an Integration & Test Center. See below.
