Stoke Space Looks To Blast Off With $260M Series C

Reusable rocket startup Stoke Space locked up a $260 million Series C as the space tech sector looks to build off a successful 2024 in terms of fundraising.

The Kent, Washington-based company is developing fully reusable rockets that make low-cost access to and from space possible. It intends to use the new funding to complete construction of its  Nova launch vehicle at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

“We deeply appreciate the confidence investors have placed in Stoke and our mission,” said co-founder and CEO Andy Lapsa in a release. “This new investment validates our progress and enables us to accelerate the development of technologies that will redefine access to and from space.”

The new round involves new and existing investors including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Glade Brook Capital Partners, Industrious Ventures, Leitmotif, Point72 Ventures, Seven Seven Six, the University of Michigan, Woven Capital, Y Combinator and others.

Founded in 2019, Stoke has raised more than $480 million, per the company.

Funding jump

After a slow-ish 2023, last year saw a little bit of a bounce-back for the space tech industry in venture funding.

In 2024, VC-backed space tech startups raised $8.3 billion, per Crunchbase data. That number is a 17% jump from the $7.1 billion raised in 2023, but short of the $9.2 billion invested in 2022.

Some of the bigger raises by U.S.-based space tech firms included Astranis raising a $200 million round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Bam Elevate in July to build out its Omega satellite program, and Firefly Aerospace, a space transportation startup, which raised a $175 million Series D led by RPM Ventures at a valuation of more than $2 billion in November.

Just this week, space infrastructure startup Loft Orbital raised a $170 million funding round led by Axial Partners and Tikehau Capital.

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Illustration: Dom Guzman