A Colorado HQ Tour + A Busy Start To The New Year

After a short late December lull, it feels like 2024 has already taken off. Lots of stuff to share today. Real Estate Highlights, some cool pics of True Anomaly’s Colorado HQ, noteworthy fundings and transactions, what I’m consuming, and CREA’s big announcement.

Let’s go!

REAL ESTATE HIGHLIGHTS

JetZero is expanding its footprint in Long Beach, moving into an office and hangar space at the airport, about 275,000 square feet of space just south of the historic terminal building. The space has sat vacant for about three years following the abrupt departure of Gulfstream in 2021. (source: Long Beach Business Journal)

Pixxel, a leader in innovative hyperspectral earth-imaging technology, opened its doors for its first Spacecraft Manufacturing Facility “MegaPixxel” in Bengaluru, India, today. The new facility, spanning more than 30,000 square feet, consolidates all satellite manufacturing services, providing a comprehensive Spacecraft Assembly, Integration, and Testing (AIT) facility under one roof. (source: Pixxel.space)

OFFICE VISIT: TRUE ANOMALY

One of the cool things about this newsletter has been the opportunity it has afforded me to connect with different people and explore some cutting-edge facilities of companies that are reimagining what is possible.

Last week, True Anomaly’s Chief of Staff Chris Lowman was kind enough to give me a tour of their impressive 35,490 square foot Centennial, Colorado headquarters (12250 E Arapahoe Rd B, Centennial, CO 80112 to be exact). For geographical context, Centennial is about 17 miles southeast of downtown Denver.

True Anomaly was founded in 2022 by four former Air Force and Space Force operators. They opened this facility within a year of beginning operations and use it for manufacturing and office space. The company recently announced a $100 million Series B round of funding led by Riot Ventures and expects to house over 100 employees at the HQ soon.

True Anomaly builds technology at the intersection of spacecraft, software, and AI to enhance the capabilities of the U.S., its allies, and commercial partners. It safeguards global security by ensuring space access and sustainability for all. You can find more about its mission on its website.

Check out pictures of its HQ below.

NOTABLE FUNDINGS

San Diego-based defense tech startup Shield AI has expanded its latest funding round with another $300 million in equity and debt, bringing its total Series F to $500 million. This total amount reflects $200 million in equity closed in November, $100 million in new equity raised at the Series F price and $200 million in debt. The debt provider is Hercules Capital; Shield declined to specify the source of the additional equity. The company’s valuation now stands at $2.8 billion, up from $2.7 billion in November. (source: TechCrunch)

Denver-based Albedo closed $35M at a boosted valuation to build satellites that orbit very, very close to Earth. In September 2022, a little less than a year after completing Y Combinator, Albedo announced it had raised a $48 million Series A round. Now, the company says it has closed $35 million in Series A-1 financing at an up-round valuation. (source: TechCrunch)

AGREEMENTS, PARTNERSHIPS, & CONTRACTS

Long Beach’s Rocket Lab confirmed the recent speculation that its newly secured $515 million contract to build and operate eighteen satellites for the U.S. government was in fact with the Space Development Agency — an arm of Space Force — as part of a military defense constellation. (source: Long Beach Business Journal)

Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation joined Beta Technologies in collaborating with Atlantic Aviation, an FBO network and aviation services provider, to add electric charging stations to Atlantic locations across the U.S. The new infrastructure will open up the airfields to Joby’s S4, Archer’s Midnight, Beta’s Alia, and other electric air taxi designs. (source: FLYING)

Santa Ana-based Overair, a developer of all-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, announced the United States Navy has awarded Overair a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) contract to further develop the high-integrity individual blade control (IBC) technology integrated into its Butterfly eVTOL aircraft. Under the agreement, Overair will advance the IBC system for potential Navy use with a specific focus on safety-critical architecture. SBIR awards and contracts are available to for-profit companies headquartered in the U.S. that have no more than 500 employees. (source: Overair.com)

One more Overair contract. It has received a letter of intent from JetSetGo, India’s largest private jet provider, for the purchase of 50 Butterfly eVTOL aircraft. Overair is the only eVTOL manufacturer selected for JetSetGo’s initial $1.3 billion AAM investment. (source: Overair.com)

The Space Development Agency announced it has selected  L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, and Sierra Space to build and operate 54 satellites equipped with infrared sensors capable of tracking hypersonic missiles in all phases of flight. The satellites will be part of SDA’s Tranche 2 Tracking Layer, a network of satellites in low orbit 1,000 kilometers above Earth. Each company will produce and operate 18 satellites — the contract awarded to L3Harris is worth $919 million, Lockheed Martin’s is $890 million, and Sierra Space’s is $740 million. The contracts include incentives for on-time delivery. (source: SpaceNews)

John Deere announced it has entered into an agreement with SpaceX to provide cutting-edge satellite communications (SATCOM) service to farmers. Utilizing the industry-leading Starlink network, this solution will allow farmers facing rural connectivity challenges to fully leverage precision agriculture technologies. This partnership, an industry first, will enable John Deere customers to be more productive, profitable, and sustainable in their operations as they continue to provide food, fuel, and fiber for their communities and a growing global population. (source: Deere.com)

JOB BOARD

Torrance’s Broadata Communications currently has multiple job opportunities available. For example, numerous engineering roles such as software, system, and electrical.

CREA’S BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

A little bit of self-promotion, but the brokerage I co-founded, CREA, just hired an Aerospace Director, Walter Stiebel. After 39 years at Northrop Grumman, most recently as the Program Director of the F-35 fighter jet program, Stiebel has a ton of experience in the hard tech space.

For CREA, he’ll be a resource in helping our clients with ITAR/OSHA compliance, manufacturing processes integration and implementation, and agile product development lifecycle needs.

Lots of buzzwords there, but IYKYK. For more info, here’s a link to our press release.

WHAT I’M CONSUMING (AND ENJOYING)

📆 Speaking of True Anomaly, they’re mentioned in this TechCrunch piece, What we’re looking forward to seeing from the space industry in 2024. Looking like a busy and promising year!

🪐 Impulse Space’s CEO Thomas Mueller introduced Helios, a high-performance kick stage with the ability to travel from LEO to MEO, GTO, GEO, TLI, and Earth Escape within 24 hours. Key takeaway: Helios is designed to transfer 5+ tons from LEO to GEO in under 24 hours, dramatically cutting customer launch costs and time to operations. A lot of acronyms there, but Impulse Space seems to be living up to its promise to revolutionize in-space transportation. Exciting times.

📈 As many of you are probably aware, the M&A, VC, and funding markets overall have been down overall for a bit of time now, BUT the space ecosystem has held pretty strong. This Quilty SpaceTake piece dives into why this may be happening and what’s ahead for 2024.

🎯 In case you missed it, the Department of Defense delivered America’s first-ever National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS). Anduril has some ideas on how it can help the DoD. One idea, or maybe it’s a mindset that I thought was interesting: This means the next generation of defense companies must operate more like modern software companies rather than legacy hardware companies — embracing an agile software-first mindset, advanced manufacturing processes to enable speed and scale, and products built to solve problems rather than rigid specifications.

📝 I stumbled across this StartUs Insights piece, Explore the Top 10 Aerospace Manufacturing Industry Trends in 2024, that was chock full of information on not just trends, but heat maps, charts, and the impacts of the trends - very informative content.

🧮 The economics of hypersonic weapons. This Forbes article, Is DoD’s Approach To Buying Hypersonic Weapons Too Expensive?, induced flashbacks to microeconomic lectures, but when I came to, I learned some stuff. I think.

🍿 Finally, who doesn’t love a good anthem film?! This one is from Decisive Point, a patriotic investment firm focused on investing in critical technologies for defense, energy, and infrastructure.

Thanks for reading.

If you’d like your office and/or manufacturing space or business profiled, let me know. It’s always fun to explore and share the many different components of the space business.

As always, I’m here to help with your real estate needs.

Over and out!

Erik Stiebel
Founder and Vice President
CA DRE License #02080746
(c) +1 424.241.4795
[email protected]