Austin, Texas:
Firefly Aerospace has raised $175 million in a late-stage funding spherical led by RPM Ventures, valuing the house startup at greater than $2 billion, it mentioned on Tuesday.
Enterprise capital corporations have been investing strongly in rocket makers and satellite tv for pc producers, marking a shift within the funding pattern for such capital intensive companies, Seraphim Area mentioned in a report final month.
Texas-based Firefly makes small and medium launch automobiles for business launches to the earth’s orbit. It additionally presents on-orbit companies by its Elytra line of orbital automobiles, offering internet hosting, rideshare, supply and servicing missions.
The startup is getting ready for its first mission to the moon, dubbed Blue Ghost, as a part of NASA’s Industrial Lunar Payload Service initiative later this 12 months.
The Sequence D funding spherical at Firefly included present traders in addition to new entities, together with GiantLeap Capital and Human Component.
Firefly intends to make the most of the contemporary capital to reinforce the market attain of its Elytra spacecraft, transition to full-scale manufacturing of its Alpha rocket, and expedite the {hardware} qualification for newly creating automobiles.
The corporate mentioned it was concurrently getting ready for a number of launches of the Alpha rocket below contracts with Lockheed Martin, L3Harris and NASA, amongst others, whereas collaborating with Northrop Grumman to develop a medium launch car.
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