By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 18th, 2024
Space Exploration Technologies SpaceX is set to raise $1 billion in a private N-series funding round. With the funds, the firm will be at an advantage to bolster its operational funding gap
Elon Musk’s popular Space Exploration Technologies, SpaceX is in tune to raise a private N series funding ranging from $500 million to $1 billion. The private tech company aims to utilize the proceeds from the funding to conduct suborbital and orbital test flights of its Starship and SuperHeavy booster launch vehicle and also to commercialize its Starlink satellite broadband operations.
Among those expected to participate in the funding round includes SpaceX existing investors, Board member Luke Nosek, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Baillie Gifford, and Valor Equity Partners. SpaceX has a myriad of other investors, including Fidelity, Gigafund and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) CNBC reports.
SpaceX Innovations are Novel
SpaceX can be tagged as one of the most novel space exploration companies on Earth as it boasts of futuristic engagements. Founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars. SpaceX has developed several launch vehicles, the Starlink satellite constellation, and the Dragon spacecraft.
SpaceX’s achievements include the first privately funded liquid-propellant rocket to reach orbit (Falcon 1 in 2008), the first private company to successfully launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft (Dragon in 2010), the first private company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station (Dragon in 2012), the first propulsive landing for an orbital rocket (Falcon 9 in 2015), the first reuse of an orbital rocket (Falcon 9 in 2017), the first private company to launch an object into orbit around the Sun (Falcon Heavy’s payload of a Tesla Roadster in 2018), and the first private company to send astronauts to the International Space Station (Dragon 2 in 2020) as reported by Coinspeaker.
Many other groundbreaking achievements have positioned the world to believe that the strides of SpaceX will get us closer to making a home on other planets than previously imagined. SpaceX has achieved all this over the years with private funding.
Keeping Tabs With SpaceX Funding Over the Years
The company is currently valued at $44 billion, a position that may change following the current funding round. In August 2008, SpaceX accepted a US$20 million investment from Founders Fund. As of May 2012, SpaceX had utilized about $1 billion in the course of its operations spanning over a decade of its inception. The company’s $1 billion funds were provided by Elon Musk ($100 million), private equity gave approximately $200 million while a host of other investors put in over $100 million.
By March 2018, SpaceX had contracts for 100 launch missions, and each of those contracts provides down payments at contract signing, plus many are paying progress payments as vehicle components are built in advance of mission beginning, driven in part by US accounting rules for recognizing long-term revenue.
SpaceX raised a total of US$1.33 billion of capital across three funding rounds in 2019. In April 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported the company was raising $500 million in funding. In May 2019, Space News said SpaceX “raised $1.022 billion” the day after it launched 60 satellites towards their 12,000 plan named Starlink broadband constellation. SpaceX also raised $346 million in preparation for its join space travel with NASA back in May.
With no announced plans for SpaceX to go public, the N-series funding round is expected to inch the tech company closer to fulfilling its mission of taking everyone into space.