Off-the-shelf satellite bus business Apex raised $95 million in new funding

Fresh off the success of its first mission, a satellite manufacturer Top closed $95 million in new capital to scale its operations.

The Los Angeles-based startup successfully launched and put into service its first spacecraft in March, a model called Aries. The mission apparently went off and not using a hitch – a rarity in the space industry – and with its aerospace heritage, the corporate is targeted solely on development.

This includes increasing production of the Aries vehicle and investing in the event and production of the Nova spacecraft, which has a mass roughly twice that of Aries. The company is on the right track to provide five Aries this 12 months alone, Apex CEO and co-founder Ian Cinnamon told TechCrunch.

Apex was created based on the thesis that considered one of the foremost bottlenecks facing the event of the space industry is the production of satellite buses. Cinnamon and his co-founder, Maximilian Benassi, intend to essentially manufacture (i.e. produce and sell in standard formats) satellite buses – which have historically been subject to individual engineering processes and really long lead times – and rapidly expand the flexibility of corporations to send their payloads into orbit .

The same innovations which have increased demand for access to space – namely, falling launch costs due to SpaceX Falcon 9 ride-sharing missions – have also created the conditions for victory in the manufactured spacecraft market. Up to a certain volume, customers pay the identical to fly to orbit, so Cinnamon and Benassi realized that the spacecraft might be standardized and even barely redesigned without the extra cost of launching to the shopper.

Cinnamon said the concentrate on productivity has created a powerful foundation for the corporate. “For every satellite bus that we have sold or are in the process of selling, we are able to indicate very clearly: here is the selling price, here are the economics of our unit, here is what our margin is,” he said. “We are usually transparent with our customers and let them know that we do not strive to offer the lowest price on the market… We are sometimes able to charge an additional fee for very short delivery times.”

This vibrant economic picture has undoubtedly proven compelling for investors. While there was a variety of buzz around hard tech currently, “investors are still very keen to put their money into businesses where they can really see the fundamentals,” Cinnamon said.

According to Cinnamon, a silver lining for the corporate is that the majority customers are usually not interested in purchasing a single satellite, but in purchasing multiple satellites, with purchases often stretching over time because the constellation is built.

The company is approaching fifty people, and that number will likely double by the tip of this 12 months.

The funding round was led by early Apex investors 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 investors Andreessen Horowitz, Shield Capital, J2 Ventures, Ravelin, Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt and Avalon Capital Group.