After a successful first mission, satellite manufacturer Apex has secured $95 million in new capital to expand its operations.
The Los Angeles-based startup successfully launched and commissioned its first spacecraft, a model called Aries, in March. The mission went off seemingly successfully without a hitch, a rarity in the space industry, and now, with its flight legacy accomplished, the company is fully focused on growth.
This includes scaling up production of the Aries vehicle and investing in the development and production of Nova, a spacecraft with a mass approximately twice that of Aries. Apex CEO and co-founder Ian Cinnamon told TechCrunch that the company plans to manufacture five Aries this year alone.
Apex was founded on the theory that one of the major bottlenecks facing the growth of the space industry is satellite bus manufacturing. Cinnamon and his co-founder Maximilian Benassi are essentially productizing (i.e. manufacturing and selling in a standard format) satellite buses that have historically required custom engineering processes and very long lead times, and rapidly expanding the ability for companies to send messages. We aim to do so. Payload to orbit.
The very innovations that increased demand for space access—namely, the reduced launch costs brought about by the SpaceX Falcon 9 ridesharing mission—also set the conditions for a commercialized spacecraft to win the market. Up to a certain capacity size, customers pay the same cost to get into orbit. So Cinnamon and Benassi realized that they could standardize, and even slightly over-design, the spacecraft without incurring additional costs to launch it to customers.
Cinnamon said its focus on productization has laid a strong foundation for the business. “For every satellite bus we have sold or are selling, we can point out very clearly: here is the selling price, here is the unit economics, here is the margin we have,” he said. . “We tend to be very transparent with our customers that we don’t go for the lowest price on the market. Sometimes we may charge a premium for very fast delivery times.”
This clear economic picture was undoubtedly attractive to investors. Although there has been a lot of buzz around hard technology lately, “investors still have a strong desire to put money into businesses where they can really see the fundamentals,” Cinnamon said.
One tailwind for the company, according to Cinnamon, is that most customers are not interested in buying a single satellite, but rather multiple, with purchases sometimes extending over time as the constellation is built out. There are a lot of them.
The company has about 50 employees and is likely to double that number by the end of the year.
The funding round was led by early Apex investor XYZ Venture Capital and co-led by CRV, with participation from new investors Upfront, 8VC, Toyota Ventures, Point72 Ventures, Mirae Asset Capital, Outsiders Fund, GSBackers, and existing investor Andreessen Horowitz. , Shield Capital, J2 Ventures, Ravelin, Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt and Avalon Capital Group.