July 30 – K2 Space said on Thursday it raised $500 million in a new funding round that valued the company at $6.8 billion, more than twice the valuation at its December round, as the company prepares to increase production of large, high-power satellites.
Kleiner Perkins and ICONIQ led the round, and were new investors in the satellite maker along with Alphabet’s venture fund CapitalG. Lightspeed and Altimeter were among the existing investors that also participated in the round.
SpaceX’s blockbuster IPO, and the intense anticipation leading up to it, has attracted a fresh wave of investors to the sector. Space companies raised about $7.5 billion across 141 venture deals in the second quarter, after a record $8 billion across 159 deals in the first three months of the year.
Here are some details:
• The funding brings K2’s total capital raised to more than $1 billion, the company said. It has also secured more than $1 billion in signed commercial and government contracts.
• K2 said it was selected as the satellite-bus provider for the U.S. Space Force’s Protected Tactical Satcom-Global program, its first selection for a Pentagon program of record.
• The company will provide an initial tranche of 30 satellites for commercial satellite provider SES’s planned meoSphere network.
• K2 will also provide satellites to Anduril for the Golden Dome for America space-based interceptor missile-defense program, it said.
• The Torrance, California-based company manufactures large satellites designed for high-power and high-payload-mass missions.
• K2 said its 180,000-square-foot factory is designed to manufacture up to 100 satellites a year. More than 85% of its satellite platform is built in-house, it said.
• The company plans to introduce a 100-kilowatt Giga-class satellite in the second half of 2028. Its next mission, Trinity, is scheduled to launch multiple satellites in the second quarter of 2027.
(Reporting by Prathik Jayaprakash in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo)
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