Capitalize (7/25/23)

Good morning. We’ve got a pair of funding announcements for you today, sandwiched around this week’s Pathfinder episode. Let’s get right to it.

In today's edition...
🌿 Leaf Space Series B
🎙️ Pathfinder #0056
🛠️ Space DOTS pre-seed
🔁 On the move

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Exclusive: Leaf Space Closes €20M Series B

Leaf Space, an Italian ground-segment-as-a-service provider, has closed a €20M ($22.1M) Series B as well as an additional €15M ($16.6M) in venture debt through a European Investment Bank loan.

Leaf Space 101: CEO Jonata Puglia and CSO Giovanni Pandolfi founded the company in 2014 to provide an end-to-end, easy-to-use solution for satellite operators to send instructions to space assets and get data back down to Earth.

“The general idea is really to abstract as much as possible the actual burden of handling a satellite network, so that the customer can actually see us as basically a connectivity provider to the aerospace asset,” Pandolfi told Payload.

By the numbers:

• The company has 37 employees worldwide, and is aiming to bump that number up to ~60 by the end of the year.

• It serves ~40 government and commercial customers actively flying satellites across a variety of market segments. A handful of other companies have signed on for ground segment services for when they launch their first sats.

• The network supports ~80 satellites and as many as 10,000 monthly passes.

Enter Europe: The European Investment Bank’s loan to Leaf Space, Puglia said, signals institutional support for space activities in Europe and faith in the company’s ability to consistently produce revenue. The €15M loan will be used to continue developing the GSaaS product and user platform.

Looking forward: With this new influx of cash, Leaf Space is looking to expand its base of ground stations across the world. Right now, the company works with 17 ground stations, but is hoping to deploy an additional eight antennas by the end of the year and get its network up to 50+ total stations by the end of 2024.

Leaf Space is also looking to expand the types of services it can provide its customers. In the coming year, Pandolfi said that the company is hoping to add Ka-band support to the network as well as expand the capabilities of its user platform.

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RSVP now to join us tomorrow, July 26 at 11:00AM ET.

The Ultimate Space Holding Company and Pathfinder #0056 with Anton Brevde

What do a space station, a lunar lander, a nuclear reactor, and a fleet of cislunar space vehicles have in common? They’re all part of serial space entrepreneur Kam Ghaffarian’s holding company IBX.

IBX consists of:

• Axiom Space, which provides private flights to the ISS and is also developing a commercial space station.

• Intuitive Machines, which is developing autonomous lunar landing systems.

• X-Energy, an engineering company working on nuclear reactors and fuel design.

• Quantum Space, which provides payload transportation, critical data, and infrastructure services in geostationary orbit and cislunar space.

A sneak peek…

This week’s Pathfinder podcast features IBX’s Chief Investment Officer Anton Brevde. Anton was previously a general partner at famed deep tech venture fund, Prime Movers Lab, where he led space investments.

Payload went under the hood to understand how the four companies relate to one another and discuss the current state of the space economy, particularly:

• Anton’s role managing the business and capital needs of four highly complex businesses

• Fundraising for space companies in today’s market environment

• The role of government as a provider of non-dilutive funding

• The most common dos and don’ts for space founders

• And much more…

Pathfinder #0056 is live now…

…check it out on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or desktop.

Space DOTS Raises $1.5M Pre-Seed

Space DOTS, a UK-based advanced materials testing startup, wants to revolutionize the way the aerospace industry qualifies new materials for use in space.

The company announced the closing of a $1.5M pre-seed round this morning to build out its mini on-orbit laboratory tech. Boost VC, Sie Ventures, 7Percent Ventures, Blue Wire Capital, and angel investors Elaine Lau and Alex Ionescu contributed to the round.

“There is a paradox in space: before anything is used in space, it needs to be proven in space,” Space DOTS cofounder and CEO Bianca Cefalo told Payload. “We realized we had to come up with a solution to streamline and reduce the time to market for novel materials.”

Pick up the pace: New materials are constantly being developed, whether for aerospace or other industries, that could improve spacecraft performance. These materials may be more lightweight, durable, or radiation-resistant, but they often face major hurdles—including time and cost—that prevent them from quickly being tested and qualified for use in space, Cefalo said.

Space DOTS’ solution is the Barnacle DOT, a materials testing payload the size of a phone that can test the tensile strength and other properties of materials in space. The company is aiming to sell a full materials testing service from ground to results for under $500K, an order of magnitude less than what Cefalo says it costs today.

What’s next? Now that it’s raised its pre-seed round, Space DOTS is expanding its team, deepening its industry ties and customer base, and building a working prototype of the Barnacle DOT. Space DOTS plans to have a working product by the end of 2024 and its first flight in 2025.

In Other News

• Toyota plans to incorporate regenerative fuel on its JAXA-partnered lunar rover.

• China will fly zebrafish to Tiangong to conduct bone loss research.

• CASIC, a Chinese defense contractor, will begin launching its 300-bird VLEO constellation this year.

• Russia offered BRICS countries a dedicated module on its proposed Russian Orbital Station.

The View from Space

ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captured images of wildfires burning outside Athens.