TAMPA, Fla. — Software startup Epsilon3 said June 20 it has raised $15 million to expand its suite of space project management solutions.
Existing investor Lux Capital led the Series A funding round to support Epsilon3’s web-based platform, which provides collaboration tools that are tailor-made for spacecraft manufacturing and operations.
Engineering and operational teams behind a fifth of orbital launches from the United States in the year to date used Epsilon3 software, according to chief operating officer Max Mednik, who co-founded the startup 18 months ago.
Mednik said Epsilon3 has built up a “mix of space startups and established large companies” as customers, including Rocket Lab, Virgin Galactic, Sierra Space and the U.S. Space Force.
He said the Los Angeles-based venture is also “supporting a multi-thousand person launch company” in the U.S., which he did not name, and is “in discussions with some of the large defense primes who are interested in using our software and evaluating it now.”
Epsilon3’s platform aims to replace applications including word processing software and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets for managing complex spacecraft-specific testing and operational workflows.
First Resonance, a startup founded by former SpaceX engineers that is also based in Los Angeles, has developed a collaborative software platform with a similar purpose.
In December 2021, First Resonance announced it had raised $14 million in a Series A round led by venture capital firm Craft Ventures to scale up its business.
Mednik said Epsilon3 is mainly focused on integration, testing and operational workflows, whereas First Resonance is more focused on manufacturing tasks earlier in the process lifecycle.
“Some of our customers actually use both First Resonance and Epsilon3, and we are looking forward to building an integration with them in the future so customers can build their hardware on First Resonance and then integrate and operate it using Epsilon3,” he said.
Epsilon3 is led by CEO Laura Crabtree, who worked as a mission operations engineer at SpaceX for more than a decade before co-founding the venture.
The startup plans to use proceeds from its latest funding round to hire more engineers to build new software products, including analytical tools for making workflows more efficient.
“The next major milestone is an interconnected set of products that helps our customers run their testing and operations even more efficiently and in a way that’s synchronized to the other tools they’re using,” Mednik said.
Epsilon3 was one of 10 startups that cloud computing giant Amazon Web Services chose to join its month-long space accelerator program in June.
The accelerator course includes up to $100,000 in cloud networking technical services and resources.
Early-stage investors Moore Strategic Ventures, Y Combinator and MaC Venture Capital also participated in Epsilon3’s Series A round, which Mednik said brings its total funding to more than $18 million.
