en.Wedoany.com Reported - US commercial satellite manufacturer Apex has completed a new round of financing, raising over $200 million to expand its in-house satellite production capacity. The company announced on June 5 that this funding round nearly doubled its valuation to $2.3 billion just four years after its founding.

This round was led by investment firms Glade Brook Capital Partners and Washington Harbour Partners. Both firms also participated in the Series D funding round for launch startup Stoke Space last year and have invested in other areas of the industry. According to data from aerospace analytics provider BryceTech, Apex has raised over $718 million to date, including a $200 million round nine months ago, making it one of the fastest companies in the industry to achieve unicorn status.

Apex co-founder and CEO Ian Cinnamon said during a media briefing that the company did not urgently need the funds from this round. "We didn't need the money for this financing," he told reporters. "But given the market excitement, demand, and the scale of expansion, we decided to accept more capital." Cinnamon said it took only about 10 days from seeking funds to oversubscription, "faster than anything I've ever seen before," which he attributed to growing investor confidence in the market direction and Apex's own appeal. He added that the company "didn't feel the need to take all the capital offered" but instead chose to "keep our heads down and focus on building a real business."

This deal is part of a wave of large-scale industry financing this year, including a $500 million raise earlier this week for in-orbit transportation startup Impulse Space.

The additional funds will support 2,800 square meters of new office space at Apex's "Factory One" manufacturing facility in Los Angeles. Over the past year, the facility's workforce has more than doubled to over 350 people. Cinnamon said Apex is also continuously reviewing satellite subcomponents to determine which tasks need to be brought in-house as the company grows, in order to avoid supply chain bottlenecks. "What we end up doing is... working with suppliers to pre-purchase large inventories; we also consider acquiring companies—like last year we acquired the assets of [satellite propulsion specialist] Phase Four, or we vertically integrate," he said.

According to Cinnamon, Apex's smallest satellite platform, Aries, supports payloads ranging from about 100 kilograms to over 3,000 kilograms. Its first satellite was launched into orbit in 2024, and currently about 30% of its components are vertically integrated. The mid-range platform, Nova, which is scheduled for its first flight in about a month, has over 70% of its components developed in-house. "Over time, as we continue to expand and need increasingly large volumes of parts, we will achieve nearly 100% vertical integration."

Currently, two-thirds of Apex's business comes from the defense and intelligence sectors, and the company sees the biggest future opportunities in government-led programs. "Almost every major defense contractor is a client of Apex," Cinnamon said. Earlier this month, Northrop Grumman announced a partnership with Apex to develop space-based interceptors for the US "Golden Dome" missile defense program. Cinnamon declined to provide further details about the collaboration but said its independent "Project Shadow" space-based interceptor demonstration (using the Nova platform) would "significantly reduce the risk of this orbital magazine concept." "Project Shadow" aims to prove that Nova and the larger satellite platform series Comet, released by Apex in April, can serve as the foundation for future space-based interceptor systems. Despite uncertainties surrounding the long-term architecture and funding of Golden Dome, Apex has self-funded $15 million for Project Shadow. Cinnamon said that even if specific plans evolve, the technology "is applicable to other areas." On the commercial side, he noted remote sensing missions, communications, and emerging concepts like orbital data centers as potential applications for Apex's standardized platforms.

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