An RS1 rocket impulse undergoes acceptance testing.
ABL Space
Rocket builder ABL Space closed a $ 170 million round of funding, the company announced Thursday, making it the last private company to reach the unicorn valuation mark.
ABL raised funds from T. Rowe Price and Fidelity Management, as well as from an unnamed third-party investment firm and existing investors, with a valuation of $ 1.3 billion.
“We’ve always bragged about the efficiency of capital,” ABL CEO Harry O’Hanley told CNBC, noting that the company has spent “much less” than $ 50 million so far.
“If you compare us to other companies that spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing launch vehicles, you should see how fundamentally differentiated our underlying approach must be to achieve this,” O’Hanley added.
So far the company had raised $ 49 million in venture capital, with investors such as Venrock, New Science Ventures, Lynett Capital and Lockheed Martin Ventures. ABL had also announced about $ 45 million in contracts from the Air Force Research Laboratory and AFWERX, and the company said Thursday that it now has contracts from ten “different customers,” from a combination of commercial and government customers. .
“We believe the global space economy has significant long-term growth potential,” Jason Adams, portfolio manager of T. Rowe Price’s Global Industrials Fund, said in a statement. “We believe ABL has a management team, a technology set and a product strategy that should enable long-term competitive advantages.”
The first stage of the company’s RS1 rocket after completion of welding.
ABL Space
The ABL RS1 rocket measures 88 feet in height and is designed to launch up to 1,350 kilograms (or nearly 1½ tons) of payload into low Earth orbit, at a cost of $ 12 million per launch. This puts RS1 at the center of the commercial launch market, between Rocket Lab’s small Electron for $ 7 million and SpaceX’s heavy Falcon 9 for $ 62 million.
It also faces ABL with several other companies that develop “medium-range” rockets. Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit has recently come into orbit, while ABL is alongside Relativity Space and Firefly Aerospace in the target of the companies ’first launches later this year.
In addition to the economic focus of ABL’s rocket development process, the company also promotes the efficiency of its GS0 drop-down ground system. These are essentially the thorns of a launch facility: the erector, power supply, electrical, control center and more, all packaged in a few standard-sized transport containers.
One of the shipping containers containing the GS0 drop-down launch system infrastructure.
ABL Space
O’Hanley told CNBC in January that ABL’s rocket program was already “fully funded” through its first mission, and on Thursday said the $ 170 million added capital “will give us the opportunity to set up a larger launch scale to meet all demand we are seeing in 2022 and beyond. “
“It will also allow us to start carefully exploring more opportunities in both space technology and other domains,” O’Hanley said.
ABL’s new valuation also makes it the last space company to pass the unicorn brand with a valuation of more than $ 1 billion. The company is now one of the most valuable in the growing space industry, led by SpaceX with a valuation of $ 74 billion and followed by several companies that have announced SPAC offerings in the past six months.
Dan Piemont, president and chief financial officer of ABL, shared his view on the company’s new status.
“We don’t see our valuation as an achievement as a serious responsibility to deliver value,” Piedmont told CNBC. “We have never optimized the valuation and kept most of our private successes. We know we still have a lot to prove. We go out to build a lasting business with the best people, customers and investors in the world.”
“We hope this round proves that there is something special going on in the hood here at ABL. If you want more information on what this is, please get in touch,” Piedmont added.