D-Orbit raises US$110 million to reach new heights in space logistics services

Logistics has become the cornerstone of many things on Earth – we can order things online, but ultimately we need to transport products and ourselves from point A to point B – and some believe that logistics models will be even more important in remote space . Now, a new startup has secured a significant amount of funding to seize this opportunity. D-Orbit, an Italian startup that provides a range of logistics services to companies operating satellites and other space services, has raised 100 million euros ($110 million) in a Series C equity round.

The Milan-based company said it will raise an additional $50 million in Series C funding in the first half of this year. The current investment was led by Marubeni Corporation, a strategic backer of the Japanese industrial sector, with participation from Avantgarde (a regular investor in the aerospace industry), CDP Venture Capital, Seraphim Space Investment Trust, United Ventures, Indaco Venture Partners, Neva SGR and Primo Ventures are also involved. As far as we know, the company is valued at approximately US$500 million in this round.

The investment, now one of the largest raised by a European aerospace technology company, comes on the heels of around €60 million in contracts the company secured last year from aerospace agencies, a key customer group that accounts for about half of its business. overall business today), and triple-digit revenue growth (but no revenue numbers were disclosed).

This is also a beneficial change for D-Orbit, which is also registered as a B Corporation. The company abandoned plans to list publicly on Nasdaq last year amid the bleak IPO market. (The cancellation left some debt on D-Orbit’s equity structure, about $20 million, from bonds raised for the listing. CEO Luca Rossettini said the raise The remainder of the funds have been invested in equity.)

D-Orbit today provides last-mile satellite delivery and related logistics services, mission control i.e. services to manage launched spacecraft and hardware, and space waste management services, all with the aim of launching into Earth orbit. Its work is a combination of software and hardware development.

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Rossettini, who co-founded D-Orbit with chief operating officer Renato Panesi, said the company’s plan is to continue expanding in all of these areas and beyond.

“Our ultimate goal, the long-term vision, is to connect Mars, the asteroid belt, the moon and Earth with a logistics network that can transport goods, people and information even though we are still here,” he said in an interview.

“Still here” is tongue-in-cheek, because what D-Orbit is already doing is pretty big. The company said it has deployed 100 satellites on 13 missions and hosted 42 payloads, leveraging government space programs and the rapidly growing commercial space sector.

Just like logistics companies on Earth, the selling point is that for companies operating different services – whether it’s communications, weather analysis, industrial monitoring or whatever – their core competency is in providing services, not in acquiring satellites or satellite. Sensors on satellites go into space and manage them once there. D-Orbit claims its expanded delivery and operations model, which groups multiple customers together and bulk purchases around launches and other services, results in 40% cost and 85% time savings.

D-Orbit is competing against a smaller but equally ambitious field. Other companies in the space services field include Planet Labs, Privateer, Zenno Astronautics, Astroscale and other start-up companies.

For D-Orbit, both founders were trained as engineers and have expertise in space propulsion, flight dynamics and aerodynamics. Their interests and awareness of possibilities and limitations are coalescing with some larger market trends.

Improvements in hardware, more commercial operators (such as SpaceX) regularly launching spacecraft, and a host of new cloud-based services have led to an increasing number of services built around sky communications architecture.

This potential—D-Orbit cites forecasts of $1 trillion in “on-orbit economy” revenue by 2030—of course comes with a number of possible pitfalls: expensive equipment, tricky unit economics, equipment or launch of many opportunities. fail. This will change how these companies operate and finance in the future: Planet recently announced 10% of its layoffs to focus on more immediate return on investment opportunities.

For D-Orbit, one of the key return on investment opportunities it identified is redoubling efforts to bring the circular economy to space technology.

The need here is twofold. One is because we have a general responsibility not to simply fill space with as much waste as Earth. The second is a more immediate business and safety need: there is already so much clutter in the sky that we are at risk of some major collisions – costly and dangerous accidents – which can be achieved by cleaning up and removing what is no longer in use. objects to avoid. is using.

Today, the company has offered several ways to decommission satellites, either by helping them break up in the atmosphere (for low-Earth orbit satellites); , or move the satellite to a “graveyard orbit” 300 kilometers away at the end of its life to avoid other active satellites. The plan is to build two additional areas. First, D-Orbit attaches smaller generators to existing satellites that are running out of energy but still have life to extend their use. Second, a more ambitious idea is to offload satellites to a location where they can be broken down and the parts reused in future hardware, all while in orbit.

The latter is currently under development, Rossettini said.

“Aerospace is a strategic market where Italian innovation plays a key role on the international stage,” Agostino Scornajenchi, CEO and managing director of CDP Venture Capital, said in a statement. “D-Orbit stands for excellence and has proven itself over the years. Positioning itself as a global leader in on-orbit transportation and becoming the first aerospace company in the world to receive B Corp certification.”