Advancements in space technology and new means of financing are driving a flurry of investor interest.
When Lisa Rich held a call with investors in March to raise money for Aurvandil Acquisition, a company that buys start-ups focused on space technology, her goal was to bring in several million dollars. Ms. Rich, a member of Aurvandil’s board, almost reached her goal within an hour. “That just doesn’t happen,” she said, laughing. Richard Branson flew to the edge of space on Sunday, on a ship built by his company Virgin Galactic. Jeff Bezos, who just stepped down as Amazon’s chief executive, is set to take a spaceflight on July 20, in a spacecraft built by his company Blue Origin. And Elon Musk’s SpaceX company has a deal with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to land Americans on the moon. But moguls are far from the only people with their eyes to the skies. Investors are putting more money than ever into space technology. Space start-ups raised over $7 billion in 2020, double the amount from just two years earlier, according to the space analytics firm BryceTech. That trend is continuing this year, said Carissa Christensen, BryceTech’s chief executive. The largest deals are going to companies that launch rockets into space, like SpaceX and Relativity Space, which announced $650 million in new money last month, a day after Mr. Bezos declared that he would fly to space. But start-ups in every sector of the space industry — including launch and satellite communications, human life support, supply chains and energy — have investors’ attention. Astranis, a satellite internet company, closed a $280 million deal in April. Axiom Space, which aims to build the first commercial space station, raised $130 million in February. “I’ve never seen a market like this, ever,” said Gabe Dominocielo, a co-founder of Umbra, a start-up that develops satellites designed to take pictures regardless of weather or light conditions. “Since last year, the amount of phone calls I’ve received — as a start-up, typically, the start-up is typically making a phone call to an investor. Now it’s completely the reverse.” The boom, many executives, analysts and investors say, is fueled partly by advancements that have made it affordable for private companies — not just nations — to develop space technology and launch products into space. Thanks to technology developed for mobile phones, for example, start-ups like Planet can afford to build and deploy satellites that can image the entire Earth every day. And analytical abilities enabled by machine learning, artificial intelligence and cloud computing have increased the demand for the data those satellites produce.
