True Anomaly’s spacecraft, Jackal.
Courtesy: True Anomaly
True Anomaly, a Colorado-based startup building space interceptors for President Donald Trump’s sweeping Golden Dome project, raised $650 million, the company said on Tuesday.
The four-year-old startup is now valued at $2.2 billion and has raised a total of $1 billion. True Anomaly plans to use the capital to scale operations and nearly double its workforce to 500 employees by the end of the year.
“Space is a war-fighting domain, and our adversaries are building space war-fighting capabilities at a scale that we’ve never seen,” CEO Even Rogers told CNBC.
The space race is heating up globally, driven by investor enthusiasm for the long-awaited public market debut of Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Private space companies are also benefitting from heightened interest, with startups Vast and Sierra Space recently closing funding rounds of $500 million or more.
At the same time, the U.S. government is returning astronauts to the moon for the first time in nearly half a century as part of its Artemis missions, and is investing to secure space.
Demand for defense tools in a tense geopolitical climate is creating a massive opportunity for space firms, especially those making satellites and tools capable of tracking and intercepting rockets at closer range. President Trump is planning a massive $185 billion ballistic interceptor system, dubbed the Golden Dome, and has called to hike the defense budget to $1.5 trillion in 2027.
SpaceX’s Starlink is considered the largest satellite maker, with a Starshield line designated for military and government use. Other competitors include defense tech contractors and Amazon, which is carving out a stake with Leo, formerly Project Kuiper.
Space interceptors are a new market for True Anomaly, which also makes autonomous orbital satellites, known as Jackal, and its Mosaic autonomy software platform. True Anomaly is among 12 companies, including Anduril and SpaceX, chosen by the U.S. Space Force for up to $3.2 billion in contracts to support Golden Dome missile defense interceptors.
True Anomaly also plans to use the funding for new product launches and a major factory expansion, with plans to grow from 140,000 square feet to 2 million square feet over the next four years.
Eclipse and Riot Ventures led the funding round.
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