TAMPA, Fla. – Loft Orbital has raised $170 million to expand manufacturing facilities and improve operations with more artificial intelligence, the San Francisco-based condo operator announced Jan. 14.
Tikehau Capital and Axial Partners co-led the eight-year-old venture’s Series C funding round, bringing the total capital raised to about $325 million for a business that aims to simplify access to space by enabling customers to share spacecraft.
Loft Orbital sources satellite buses from multiple vendors, integrating them with cargo flown on behalf of customers looking to avoid the costs and complexity of owning and operating their own infrastructure.
Competitors in an increasingly crowded space-as-a-service market include Spire Global, which develops buses for smaller home satellites.
The total mass of a default Loft Orbital satellite starts around 200 kilograms, said co-founder and chief operating officer Alex Greenberg. SpaceNews in an interview, and there are short-term plans to deliver more powerful spacecraft larger than 500 kg.
Space standardization
Loft Orbital’s business is centered around a modular payload adapter that standardizes how payloads connect to satellite buses from vendors such as Airbus and BlackSky, as well as mission operations software designed to manage hybrid fleets and constellations at scale. .
“We actually have satellites in a rack,” Greenberg said, which “are essentially identical from a hardware perspective, and we just configure those satellites to apply the customer’s load.
“We are not building or designing a satellite uniquely for a customer. We’re using what we have in inventory… and I think that’s indicative of the nature of our turnkey offering, which is very different from what a lot of other companies are doing that say they do space as a service but are still essentially creating a custom solution for a client.”
Loft Orbital has deployed five satellites to date but has about 30 remaining, most scheduled for launch in 2025-2026, which the company says represent about $500 million in sales from customers ranging from NASA to French fleet operator Eutelsat .
According to Loft Orbital, demand for its condosat services comes primarily from applications in climate change monitoring, growing national security and sovereignty requirements, and a growing appetite for data-driven connectivity and insights.
Proceeds from the Series C round will support the set-up of manufacturing and integration facilities, including a 4,600 square meter factory being developed in the UAE under a joint venture.
The intelligence of the future
The company’s future plans include integrating artificial intelligence to automate satellite operations and optimize data processing to further improve efficiency.
YAM-6, launched last year on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission, is Loft Orbital’s first satellite dedicated to driving AI in space, enabling customers to customize the satellite’s use for various imaging applications.
Improving the ability for customers to seamlessly deploy software applications on a satellite is currently the biggest limitation with using AI in space, Greenberg said.
“Typically you build your satellite for yourself, or for a specific customer, and you’re not loading software onto it — other than your own software updates, and you’re not even doing that very often,” he said.
“Loft has this almost transformative paradigm where we’re not thinking of satellite as a walled garden, we’re thinking of it as a data center that anyone can use.”
Ultimately, Loft envisions that a customer can go to its website, select satellites or sensors they want to use for a virtual mission, upload their app, and then pay for the service without interacting with a employee.
“We’re not there yet and we probably never will get there, but that’s the guiding vision of this whole virtual mission offering,” he added.
Bpifrance, Foundation Capital, Temasek and Uncork Capital also participated in the Series C round.
