Space is an increasingly crowded place thanks to the constant influx of new satellites, and it’s only getting narrower as the cost of getting into orbit drops.
That dynamic has caught the attention of startup Northwood Space, which has spent the last few years developing more modern and efficient terrestrial communications infrastructure. The startup capitalized on that interest in two ways this week.
The El Segundo, Calif.-based company announced Tuesday that it closed a $100 million Series B funding round, led by Washington, D.C.-based Washington Harbor Partners (which it was on a run of space investments) and led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Northwood has also secured a $49.8 million contract with the United States Space Force to help upgrade what’s known as the “satellite control network,” which “manages a huge variety of subsequent space missions for our government,” including tracking and controlling GPS satellites, founder and CEO Bridgit Mendler said on a call with journalists.
The funding round and government contract are major milestones for the company, which is just a few years old and closed a $30 million Series A less than a year ago.
But with so much interest in funding space, hard tech and defense technology right now, Mendler said this was an opportunity for her company to grow responsibly and quickly.
“Yes, this is happening faster than we thought – you know, two fundraisers in the same year and large amounts of funds,” he said. But, he pointed out, “that’s what we’re really ready for from a production standpoint.”
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Mendler also said the new capital will help Northwood keep up with growing demand, marking a “turning point in the business.”
“We have customers coming to us all the time asking for a ground-based solution, wanting us to help think through a ground-based problem with them, and we don’t want there to be a resource constraint that prevents us from supporting that mission,” he said. “And so the resources were used very purposefully at this point to support the missions that are coming for us.”
Part of the attention at Northwood has to do with the fact that what it does—making smaller phased-array antenna systems intended to support or replace older systems based on larger dish antennas—remains innovative, especially as a vertically integrated play.
But as the amount of data transmitted to and from satellites is likely to continue to grow, it’s an advantage Mendler wants to press.
“It’s hard to do. It takes a lot of risk, a lot of capital. It takes a lot of different skill sets to come together to really wrap your head around the whole landscape. [station] Problem,” Mendler said. “And so, yes, it’s a big undertaking to take on, and our bet is that if we can really do that, if we can really think about the landscape holistically under one roof, then that produces a ton of value for the industry, and that’s really the right model.”
This step has been making sense for prospective commercial customers for some time now. Companies like SpaceX and Amazon, which have massive Internet satellite networks in the works, are building and operating their own ground stations. However, capacity is limited for other players who usually have to rent space from third party providers who may not always have availability.
Northwood CTO Griffin Cleverly expects the expanded capacity — which will help drive the new fundraising — to be valuable for customers “scaling into large constellations, going from one or two satellites to dozens or more.”
Right now, Northwood’s “gateway” sites can handle eight satellite connections, he said. By the end of 2027, however, he expects Northwood’s next generation of ground stations to handle 10 to 12, with the company’s overall network able to communicate with “hundreds” of satellites.
With the Space Force contract, what Northwood is selling has clearly become an attractive option for the government.
Not surprisingly, however, the newest branch of the military begins with the Satellite Control Network (SCN). In 2023, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report noted that the DoD has been aware of capacity issues with the SCN since 2011.
“SCN-based satellite users interviewed by GAO said this increased demand and the resulting limits on system availability could jeopardize their missions in the future,” the report said.
