The Exploration Company to the moon! (and around it, and back to earth too and maybe to Mars…?)
They say Venture capital is a people business, at Red River West we believe it’s an Exceptional people business and no one better than Hélène Huby embodies this.
Hélène’s path from the corporate world to raising a seed round
Alfred met Hélène 10 years ago. At the time she had just started bringing her energy, expertise, vision and determination to the Airbus Group, where her last role was VP of the European Service Module (ESM). The ESM is the power and propulsion component of NASA’s Orion orbital vehicle, which the space agency wants to use to return humans to the moon for the first time since the Apollo era (1972).
Her quest for impact above personal ambition and her true attachment to Europe is what makes her one of a kind
Alfred Vericel
Red River West was launched in 2017 and Hélène became one of our closest and most valuable advisors helping us on many topics including our first Space Tech deep dive back in 2019.
In August 2021, she and two others — Artur Koop, the ESM propulsion subsystem lead, and Jon Reijneveld, the deputy lead systems engineer — departed Airbus. With Sebastien Reichstat and Pierre Vinet, the Exploration Company was born.
I didn’t want to spend my life working on a vehicle that is not reusable, cannot be refueled. (Techcrunch)
Hélène Huby
The Exploration Company is building a modular and reusable orbital vehicle called Nyx that will fly around Earth, go to the Moon, and come back with the core use case of carrying cargo. The vehicles have open interfaces, are designed to be affordable and accessible and use greener propellant (they plan on using biomethane instead of hydrazine).
It was only natural that she approached us for her Seed round in 2021. At the time, despite the potential and quality of the team, we deemed that the company’s risk profile did not match Red River West’s Venture Growth thesis. The oversubscribed seed round was led by Promus Ventures, with co-investors Vsquared and Cherry Ventures.
Our conviction as a Venture Growth fund
In late 2022, in light of the company’s traction, we revisited our analysis and our due diligence involved the most knowledgeable experts working at the highest level at ESA, NATO, SpaceX, NASA, Blue Origin, Axiom Space, Thales, Arianespace, etc. We are convinced that Red River West is well suited to The Exploration Company.
We believe now is the time to invest in the Space market: 2018 marked the beginning of a second space race combining China’s increased activity and a new private/public rivalry/cooperation. There are many use cases for cargo supply missions (science, manufacturing, entertainment, tourism etc.). We believe cargo to station alone should be a multi billion opportunity by 2027.
This capsule is a strategic project for Europe: as an European player which provides an alternative on the global market for Low Earth Orbit (“LEO”) cargo, The Exploration Company is strategic for Europe as well as being welcomed by other stakeholders (suppliers, NASA etc.). The Exploration Company is actually complementary to SpaceX’s Starship whose focus will be more and more on larger capacity cargo. The capsule’s closest analogues are SpaceX’s Dragon capsule or Boeing’s Starliner. According to our analysis, there is no close European competitor — and therein lies the opportunity for a European startup to keep up on the international stage.
An unmatched team of experts: Hélène’s team has already designed and delivered such vehicles to NASA in the past, this massively reduces operational risk. She has a unique experience in space, blending a highly strategic vision and broad operational skills which allow her to get into the most granular details when leading her teams. She also combines a rare entrepreneurial mindset with the ability to work extremely well with the public sphere. She has surrounded herself with some of the best Space experts, our reference calls have confirmed that the team is one of the best in Europe and is only getting better. Hélène told us in 2022 “we received more than 2000 spontaneous applications per year to work with us and they’re of high quality”.
Execution is 100% on track with strong traction: an impressive achievement in the current global context and given it is a brand new company. This is combined with early proof of monetization with mission #1 in 2024 100% pre-booked and an advanced pipeline of several millions for 2026 mission. Besides, there are ongoing strategic discussions (some already formalized with LOIs) with legacy space players.
As you know, at Red River West we invest in the best European founders targeting US market expansion and Helene has clear ambitions to expand her business in the US. She is well known to most of the important US actors and partnerships are developing: NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Orbital Reef, Axiom. It’s key for the success of her company to be successful beyond Europe and the US is by far the biggest “open” market, bigger than the European market. There also is an attractive value proposition for US customers to challenge the different monopolies and open the EU market for these clients through barter like government agreements.
After an intense analysis process, we decided to lead the round and agreed on the main terms with Hélène before being joined by EQT Ventures. We are proud to have structured this largely oversubscribed round and brought together an ideal consortium of investors: both specialists and leading generalists.
Needless to say this was a fascinating due diligence for the Red River West team. We couldn’t be more excited to welcome The Exploration Company to our portfolio!
