en.Wedoany.com Reported - Large high-power satellite manufacturer K2 Space has announced the completion of a $500 million Series D funding round, valuing the company at $6.8 billion. The round was led by Kleiner Perkins and ICONIQ, with participation from CapitalG, Lightspeed, Altimeter, Spark Capital, Sands Capital, ARK Invest, T. Rowe Price Associates, and other existing investors.
K2 Space co-founder and CEO Karan Kunjur stated that when he founded K2 with his brother Neel four years ago, their thesis was that "building bigger" would be the direction of space exploration and development, and this funding round validates that argument. The company is preparing to scale production capacity to build up to 100 large satellites per year.
Kleiner Perkins partner Lucas Oliveira noted that power and mass are the keys to space missions, and the K2 team has spent four years solving the engineering challenges posed by larger, more powerful platforms, which have now been validated in orbit, and the company is currently winning commercial and national security programs. ICONIQ general partner Tengbo Li mentioned that with Gravitas now in orbit, K2 is beginning to validate its proposition; over 85% of the platform's components are manufactured in-house, and this vertical integration capability allows the company to scale from single satellites to batch deliveries.
With the completion of this funding round, K2 Space's cumulative funding exceeds $1 billion. The company has signed over $1 billion in commercial and government contracts to build large, high-power, high-payload-mass satellites. Specific projects include: providing the first 30 satellites for the meoSphere network planned by commercial satellite operator SES; supplying satellites to Anduril, a project partner in the U.S. "Golden Dome" space-based intercept missile defense program; and participating as a satellite platform provider in the Space Force's "Protected Tactical Satcom-Global" program, marking K2's first entry into an official Pentagon program.
K2 Space's facility in Torrance, California, covers 180,000 square feet, with a designed annual production capacity of up to 100 satellites and a supply chain vertical integration rate of 85%. The company stated that its infrastructure, supply chain, and talent pool have all been positioned to meet customers' large-scale production demands.
Co-founder and CTO Neel Kunjur revealed that the company plans to launch a 100kW Giga-class satellite in the second half of 2028, which will be used to deploy large-scale computing capabilities in orbit. K2 Space's next mission, "Trinity," will launch multiple satellites in the second quarter of 2027, and over the next 24 to 48 months, the company will deliver on large constellation orders on schedule.
