The company’s YAM-2 spacecraft in integration for launch.
Loft . Orbit
Loft Orbital, a space infrastructure startup, has raised $140 million in a new funding round led by investment giant BlackRock.
The San Francisco-based company launched its first missions into space earlier this year, with Loft planning to use the new funding to scale its business and double its team.
“The best way to think of us is that we provide space-infrastructure-as a service,” Loft Orbital co-founder and COO Alex Greenberg told CNBC.
“If you’re a customer with a single payload or constellation that you want to put into space, but you don’t want to be the builder or designer of your own satellite – deal with the manufacturer, deal with a launch carrier, and then actually operate it while it’s in space – then you work with people like us,” Greenberg added.
The company has raised $130 million including contributions from investors such as CEAS Investment, Foundation Capital, Uncork Capital, Ubiquity VC and more. Loft also raised an additional $10 million from the same investors through convertible bonds, meaning short-term debt, converted in the round – bringing the total raised to $140 million.
Loft declined to disclose valuation after the increase.
A team of company engineers stands around the YAM-3 spacecraft.
Loft . Orbit
In addition to San Francisco, Loft also has factories and manufacturing facilities in Denver, Colorado, and Toulouse, France. The company currently has 70 employees, with Loft co-founder and CEO Pierre-Damien Vaujour telling CNBC he expects to grow to about 160 people by the end of 2022.
So far, Loft has launched two spacecraft – which the company calls YAM, or “Yet Another Mission” – that are currently in orbit, each carrying several payloads for customers. To date, Loft has more than 20 clients, including NASA, DARPA, the US Space Force and Honeywell.
Greenberg emphasized that traditionally, it takes “between 18 and 36 months to deliver a satellite” after an order in the space industry. To speed things up, however, Loft commanded his spacecraft “without knowing what was going to fly there,” he said.
“It’s almost like an inventory model or a fulfillment center model – where we have the satellites in the house, a customer shows up, we attach them and send them to the launch site.” Greenberg said, adding that the business model means Loft’s customers “could get space in months instead of years if they did it themselves.”
