US-based Firefly Aerospace, a provider of economical and dependable launch vehicles, spacecraft, and in-space services for small payloads, raised US$ 175M in a Series A round of funding. The company’s valuation has reached US$ 1 billion. The startup also announced that it intends to raise another US$ 300 million later in 2021. It is looking forward to the inauguration of its Alpha rocket launch, which is currently targeting a June take-off.
Investors: The Series A funding round was led by DADA Holdings, with participation by Astera Institute, Canon Ball LLC and others. Jed McCaleb, a cryptocurrency billionaire, invested in Firefly and will join its board of directors.
About Firefly Aerospace
Founded in 2014 by Maureen Gannon, Michael Blum, PJ King, Thomas Markusic and Ukraine-born multimillionaire Max Polyakov, Firefly is a new commercial launch provider aiming to follow in the footsteps of SpaceX and Rocket Lab. It aims to serve the growing small satellite launch market. It has been developing its Alpha rocket for the past few years. Firefly has also bagged commercial and civil government launch contracts from NASA, General Atomics and others.
The startup had gone bankrupt when it was Firefly Space Systems, which was subsequently reborn as Firefly Aerospace, a wholly-owned venture bankrolled by Noosphere Ventures. In 2017, Max Polyakov pulled the startup out of bankruptcy and invested US$ 200 million in it. After this investment round, he remains the largest shareholder, owning less than 50% through his Noosphere Ventures.
Firefly’s redesigned Alpha vehicle has more launch capacity, with the ability to carry 1000 kg to low Earth orbit, or 600kg to sun-synchronous orbit. It is currently developing a lunar lander called “Blue Ghost,” that will provide lunar payload delivery services for NASA as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, in an attempt to achieve its main goal of – “make space for everyone.”
What the founders have to say: “As Firefly transitions into commercial service and embarks on additional ambitious programs such as lunar payload delivery, the time is right to expand the Firefly investor base.” – Max Polyakov, co-founder of Firefly.
What the investors have to say: “Space exploration is essential to ensuring our survival beyond our fragile planet. Firefly is engineering the next-generation infrastructure needed for a variety of unprecedented space activities.” — Jed McCaleb.
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