Announcing Loft Orbital’s $13M Series A to Make Space Simple
The space industry is changing at a breakneck pace. Reusable rockets, internet-beaming megaconstellations, and today’s state-of-the-art payload and data analytics technologies are all transforming how space is used to serve society’s needs.
Still, the business model behind putting up and operating satellites has seen little innovation for decades. Today, we are proud to announce that Loft Orbital has raised a $13M Series A, led by Foundation Capital, to change that.
2019 has been a year of explosive growth for Loft as we kicked off our first mission, Yet Another Mission-2, which launches next year, and we recently added YAMs 3 and 4 to the mix. Our customers are tackling global-scale problems, such as:
· Orbital Sidekick monitoring methane leaks
· Eutelsat connecting off-the-grid devices
· Fugro demonstrating sub-meter satellite positioning
· The UAE Government flying an imaging mission
· SpaceChain providing a platform for decentralized applications in space
· Several unannounced commercial and government customers flying science payloads, national security missions, and imagers.
We are also thrilled to announce that we have opened Loft offices in Boulder, Colorado and Toulouse, France. In Boulder, we are building Loft’s mission management and assembly, integration, and test capabilities. In Toulouse we are developing software products to solve aerospace problems.
With this Series A, we have raised $20M in both equity and non-dilutive capital since starting Loft.
What we are most proud of is the team we have built, which numbers nearly 30 employees today. This team has been fearless and relentless in conquering technical challenges and passionate about building Loft from the ground up. We have made it this far because of their talent, grit, and inventiveness.
Antoine, Pierre, and I started Loft Orbital three years ago to make space simple and provide the fastest and most reliable ride to orbit in the space industry. We had a hunch that offering a turnkey service to fly customer payloads would solve the pain of putting up space infrastructure, just like Amazon Web Services makes it simple for anyone to deploy software to the cloud without having to touch a server. Three years later, we have never been more convinced that we are on to something big.
A New Business Model for Space
Even in 2019, the space industry has not yet embraced the standardization that has unlocked massive scale in so many hardware and software businesses. A satellite is fundamentally a custom-built one off, designed to meet a unique set of requirements. The immense amount of engineering and design work that goes into building a satellite bus results in extended and unpredictable lead times. Simply buying a satellite — not to mention launching, operating, licensing and insuring the full spacecraft — is a painful and resource-intensive process. For customers that want to collect data and space and get assets to orbit as fast as possible, this is an unacceptable yet unavoidable fact of life.
Loft Orbital exists to solve this problem. We shield our customers from the complexity of space by flying their sensors and payloads on 100kg-class satellite platforms. We’ve developed products that enable us to fly any kind of sensor on a standard satellite platform. The Payload Hub is a universal adapter that sits between the satellite bus and the onboard payloads, decoupling the two sides to minimize the need for customization; Cockpit is an autonomous payload tasking and scheduling that provides customers with a simple interface or API for tasking their payload.
Around these products, we have built our inSpace Partnership Program, which includes satellite, payload, launch, and ground segment partners. As we build more interoperability with these partners, we increase our ability to quickly deploy missions.
While the payloads on each Loft mission will vary, our philosophy is to keep the underlying “stack” of Cockpit, Payload Hub and satellite bus virtually unchanged. As per-kilogram launch costs in the space industry decline, we accept being slightly under-optimized for mass and volume in order to win on schedule and reliability. Already, we plan to fly YAMs 2, 3, and 4 on a common satellite bus design — early proof of the power of this technology.
Loft is also flipping the legacy business model of space on its head. Today, customers must pay 100% of their mission costs prior to launch, meaning that even before the satellite reaches orbit, the customer has paid the satellite manufacturer and launch provider in full. We believe this model does not incentivize vendors to be customer-obsessed; we aim to do better by sharing in our customers’ risk. In our “as a service” model, we turn our customers’ CapEx into OpEx and charge an in-orbit subscription fee contingent on Loft hitting our service-level obligations.
What’s Next?
Today, Loft is focused on delivering our first missions to orbit next year. In the near future, we will continue to improve our products and industrialize our supply chain so that we will be able to receive a customer’s payload hardware, integrate it to a standard satellite and deliver it to the launch pad in just a few months. With this flexibility, we can accommodate late addition payloads to a mission and “hot-swap” out payloads that are going to miss delivery.
Just as AWS enables anyone to build and scale web applications without a data center or server rack, we abstract our customers away from space infrastructure, allowing them to focus exclusively on what matters most: payload development and data applications.
Finally, we want to thank Steve Vassallo and Li Sun from Foundation Capital for believing in Loft’s vision and leaving no stone unturned in their due diligence on us. In addition, we are excited to bring Sunil Nagaraj onboard — after becoming a pioneer in investing in space start ups at Bessemer, we are proud to be Sunil’s first space investment at his new fund, Ubiquity VC. An extremely special thanks to Jeff Clavier at Uncork Capital for believing in Loft when we were just a PowerPoint deck, and working tirelessly to help some crazy dudes with a space company raise a Series A! And finally, we want to thank the other investors we brought on to Team Loft in this round: Kima Ventures, Cendana Capital, Swell Partners, and GFA Ventures.
And we are hiring, check out our careers page!: https://www.loftorbital.com/careers