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Loft Orbital received money for business development
Space startup Loft Orbital held a funding round that raised a total of $140 million. The main investor was BlackRock Corporation. Foundation Capital, Ubiquity VC, CEAS Investments, and others took part in the round. Loft originally got $130 million, and the startup also got another $10 million in additional funding to be provided through convertible promissory notes as a short-term loan. This loan was converted during the round. Despite receiving the large investment, the company did not disclose its valuation.
Loft Orbital is in the business of providing services in the space industry. The startup is based in San Francisco and already conducts space missions. The company plans to use the funds from the round to develop its business and expand its team. The goal of Loft is to develop space infrastructure and provide services to various customers. For example, the company needs to send a payload into orbit, but it is quite expensive to independently design a satellite or a full-scale device. In this case, an excellent solution would be to use the services of Loft, which takes care of transportation, launch, control and other support.
Most often it takes 18 to 36 months to send a satellite into orbit. The startup provides customers with ready-made space platforms and the necessary equipment, and it takes about two months to prepare. Loft Orbital now has more than 20 clients, including NASA, organizations from the U.S. Department of Defense, government agencies and Honeywell, which produces aerospace equipment.
In addition to San Francisco, the startup also has manufacturing facilities in two other American cities and Toulouse in France. It has 70 employees, but management plans to expand to 160 by the end of this year.
The space industry is actively developing. Last year, NASA signed a contract with Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman and Nanoracks. Cooperation will lie in the development of projects for the construction of private space stations. A total of 415.6 million dollars is allocated for these purposes. The decision to invest in the creation of stations is dictated by the imminent retirement of the ISS. Therefore NASA is looking for new options, which attracts private companies that operate in the sector of space services. In addition, the organization wants to strengthen the U.S. position in the segment and become one of the first countries, which develops the near-Earth orbit.
U.S. companies are already engaged in transportation to orbit and are intensively exploring new directions. The potential of space is just opening up, and many startups are trying to realize their ideas.