Muon Space has more than 50 satellites already in development for customers.
US space-tech manufacturer Muon Space has raised $250m in a Series C round to meet the growing demand for satellites across industries.
The round was led by Eclipse Capital, with participation from Galvanize, Google, Salesforce Ventures, Wellington Management, I Squared Capital and Woven Capital. Existing backers included Radical Ventures, Congruent Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, Activate Capital, ACME Capital, ArcTern Ventures and Overlap Holdings.
The “heavily oversubscribed” round brings the 2021-founded satellite-maker’s total raise to more than $386m, and highlights investors’ hopes for the $1.8trn space-tech sector.
Satellite-building has become a lucrative business, as new-generation capabilities powered with AI open up opportunities across defence, surveillance, research and data processing.
Orbital data centres are seeing a significant push, led primarily by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which recently filed for a constellation of up to 1m satellites. Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin, meanwhile, filed plans for 51,600 data centre satellites in low Earth orbit.
Muon said it is jointly collaborating with SpaceX’s Starlink to develop differentiated mission capabilities, including advanced payloads, on-orbit AI compute and real-time, ultra-high bandwidth satellite connectivity.
The Silicon Valley company said it has the capacity to build more than 500 satellites each year, with hopes that its newly opened manufacturing facility in San Jose can take that capacity alone by 2027, marking a 10-fold expansion over what it could manufacture previously.
It has launched a total of 11 satellites, with seven this year alone. The company now has more than 50 satellites in development for customers, including 13 satellites set for launch over the next year.
Muon said it will use the fresh raise to accelerate production of large-scale constellations and expand the its dual-use spacecraft platforms.
“Space infrastructure needs to scale the way cloud infrastructure did,” said Jonny Dyer, the CEO of Muon Space.
“As more industries rely on space-based intelligence, communications and compute, this investment allows us to accelerate the next generation of space infrastructure.”
Lior Susan, the founder and CEO of Eclipse said: “Muon is redefining how space infrastructure is built.
“By integrating mission design, manufacturing, launch and operations into a single platform, the team has turned what was once a bespoke, years-long process into a repeatable model built to scale.
“With multiple successful constellations already in orbit and demand accelerating across commercial, government and international sovereign customers, Muon is positioned to become the foundational platform for the next generation of space-based capabilities.”
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