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.