Venture moves in space and manufacturing to highlight

Axiom Space

This commercial space station developer has collected $350 million in new capital aid its pursuit of opportunities surrounding NASA’s effort to replace the International Space Station.

Axiom Space opened for business in 2016 and is one of three companies vying for the ISS replacement alongside Blue Origin and Starlab, a joint venture majority owned by Voyager Technologies.

Type One Ventures and Qatar Investment Authority co-led the round with participation from named investors 1789 Capital, 4iG, LuminArx Capital Management. Axiom’s founder and executive chairman Kam Ghaffarian also participated, while J.P. Morgan acted as sole placement agent.

For Axiom, the financing round follows its hire of Dr. Jonathan Cirtain as chief executive back in the fall.

Stoke Space

This launch systems maker has added another $310 million in new financing as part of its Series D capital round, which was initially announced in October at $510 million fetched from investors.

At that time, Stoke Space said it would gear much of that $510 million toward completing the activation of a launch complex at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. A bulk of the new $310 million will go toward efforts at accelerating Stoke’s product roadmap.

Stoke opened for business in 2020 and designs its Nova rocket as a fully-reusable offering for medium-lift launches by both government and commercial entities.

Thomas Tull’s U.S. Innovative Technology Fund led the $510 million Series D round. Stoke’s other known backers include Washington Harbour Partners, General Innovation Capital, 776, Breakthrough Energy, Glade Brook Capital, Industrious Ventures, NFX, Sparta Group, Toyota Ventures and Woven Capital.

Perseus Materials

This startup pushing to build the world’s fastest large-scale system for manufacturing composite parts has secured new investment from Lockheed Martin Ventures, the defense giant’s arm for backing young companies.

Perseus opened for business in 2022 and touts its engineers as having joined from companies such as Bombardier, Exxon and Whirlpool. Perseus describes its process as still using three-dimensional techniques, but eliminating molds and tooling in order to produce components on-site.

While still early, Perseus is touting progress on manufacturing internal blade components for a large wind turbine manufacturer and exploring maritime defense applications.

The company was backed early by Roadrunner Fund and incubated by Road Runner Venture Studios, which was set up for creating other firms focused on deep tech.