Loft Orbital lands a fresh $170M after logging over $500M of bookings

Space infrastructure company Loft Orbital has raised $170 million in Series C funding co-led by Tichou Capital and Axial Partners. Notably, the amount Series C financing That’s more than the combined $160 million the company has raised since 2017.

Loft Orbital It declined to disclose its valuation. According to PitchBook, its post-money valuation at the time of its last raise in 2021 — a $130 million Series B round — was $550 million.

BPFrance, Foundation Capital, Temasek and Uncork Capital also participated, bringing the total to $330 million over the life of the company.

Loft Hard declined to disclose revenue figures, but co-founder and COO Alex Greenberg told TechCrunch that the company has grown revenue by 100% for two consecutive years.

“We have raised just over $160 million in capital prior to this Series C and achieved over $500 million in bookings. In an industry known for its capital intensity, we pride ourselves on our capital efficiency,” he added. “Right now we are really focused on profitability and making the business sustainable.“

The company has sold more than 30 satellites and its customers include NASA, Microsoft, Anduril, and BAE Systems. In total, it says it has deployed more than 25 customer missions across the five satellites launched so far.

When it launched in January 2017, the company’s self-described mission was to “make it easier for organizations to deploy and manage missions in space.” In short, Loft aims to manage customer mission deployment and management processes as a service.

It buys standard satellites from vendors such as Airbus and LeoStella and equips them with payloads from customers, saving them the hassle of buying, operating and managing their own hardware and ground segment networks.

“Unlike others in the industry, we’re not designing satellites for specific missions—we’re configuring existing components of our satellite platform,” Greenberg said. “Think of it like Lego building blocks.”

It also offers “virtual missions,” allowing its customers to deploy their software apps to a lofted satellite to use on-board sensors and compute nodes, analyze data as it’s being collected, and run a full range of use cases.

The loft has been busy as of late. The startup announced a joint venture with Abu Dhabi-based Marlan Space last August Raised over $100 million from a holding company linked to the Emirati royal family to increase domestic satellite manufacturing capacity in the region.

It also said it launched a dedicated satellite YAM-6 AI running in space.

The Loft will use its new capital in two ways, Greenberg said. It plans to go from a handful of satellite launches each year to ten-plus annually. It wants to expand its virtual missions, expand its AI business where customers can build an AI system in their own cloud (for example detecting wildfires), and deploy it on a lofted satellite. And he hopes to grow an ecosystem of AI application partners.