Isar Aerospace closes
new financing round, raises €75m
9 December 2020
Isar Aerospace takes a
major hurdle to provide the technical
infrastructure to explore the potential of space
for humanity: the company raises €75m from
existing and new investors, securing the largest
Series B funding round in the European SpaceTech
sector. The round is led by leading European
venture capital firm Lakestar, joined by the
substantial participation of early backers UVC
Partners, Earlybird and Vsquared Ventures. New
investors HV Capital, as well as Ann-Kristin and
Paul Achleitner, are also joining the round
while increasing the total financing volume to
more than USD 100m.
“We are very happy about
the great interest and trust our new and
existing investors are placing in us. Now we are
completely financed until the maiden flight of
our launch vehicle and can fully concentrate on
the final development steps and upcoming tests.
In other words, there’s nothing standing in the
way of the first successful launch of a German
launch vehicle into Earth’s orbit“, says Daniel
Metzler, CEO of Isar Aerospace.
“All over the world,
satellite manufacturers, telecommunications
companies, car manufacturers or even
governmental organizations and research
institutes need access to space. The bottleneck
is launch capacity, which is often still too
expensive and inflexible. We will offer a
solution to this problem as we provide a direct
connection where customers can book their
satellite tickets at any time with maximum
flexibility and cost-efficiency.“
Isar Aerospace claims to be
the only privately-financed European space
company that has developed its launch vehicles
with a payload of over 1,000 kilograms including
their propulsion systems in-house from scratch.
The founders use a pragmatic engineering
approach, a highly automated manufacturing and a
simple design, to reduce the cost of each rocket
launch drastically. Moreover, the founders place
high importance on the fact that the entire
value creation is carried out within the
European Union. The funding, amounting to more
than USD 100m stems almost exclusively from
European investors.
With Isar Aerospace, Europe
now has the necessary powers, resources, and
technological advantage to be competitive and
pioneering in space technology. It enables
European space tech to actively enforce its own
values and legal concepts against others
operating in this field.
“We are the first European
company that is able to transport satellite
constellations into Earth’s orbit on
internationally competitive conditions. Using
various launchpads around the globe, we will
also be able to reach different Earth’s orbits.
This sparks interest from numerous non-European
customers as well“, says Josef Fleischmann, COO
of Isar Aerospace.