AUSTIN, TX / EL SEGUNDO, Calif., December 6, 2022 (Slingshot Aerospace PR) — Slingshot Aerospace, Inc., a company building data and analytics products to make space operations safer, today announced that it has raised $40.85 million in an oversubscribed Series A2 funding round. The round was led by Sway Ventures and included participation from others, including C16 Ventures, ATX Venture Partners, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, and Draper Associates, the global venture capital firm of prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper. In addition to $40.85 million in equity funding, Horizon Technology Finance (NASDAQ: HRZN) provided a venture loan to accelerate Slingshot’s growth.
“Slingshot Aerospace continually makes strategic moves that demonstrate an unwavering commitment to making space safer for all of society,” said Najib Khouri-Haddad, General Partner, Sway Ventures. “The massive growth in space operations carries a significant risk as well as an opportunity. Slingshot has aggressively and creatively carved a path to build new technologies that solve critical challenges and greatly reduce risks in space. Our investment in Slingshot is an investment in the future of space as we know it.”
Slingshot Aerospace used a portion of the new funds to finance the recently announced acquisitions of Numerica’s Space Domain Awareness division and Seradata, which further differentiate Slingshot’s products as the most robust and authoritative space situational awareness and space traffic coordination solutions available in the market. Renaissance Strategic Advisors acted as a strategic advisor on the acquisitions.
Slingshot’s funds will also be used to:
- Drive growth across Slingshot’s global commercial, civil, and defense customer base
- Further build out Slingshot’s Global Sensor Network, which already includes 150 sensors and 30 telescopes across 20 locations around the globe
- Accelerate the expansion of Slingshot’s Digital Space Twin™ software platform and commercialization of company products, including Slingshot Beacon
“Our successful funding round during a global economic downturn is validation that investors understand the urgent need for safe and sustainable spaceflight operations as activity in orbit outpaces current space traffic management constructs.” said Melanie Stricklan, Co-founder and CEO, Slingshot Aerospace. “Our mission is to ensure that our customers overcome those vulnerabilities and optimize their critical operations in orbit. We have an unprecedented opportunity in this next phase of growth as we continue to be a driving force to de-risk operations in the space revolution.”
There are more than 10,000 satellites in orbit today according to Slingshot Aerospace’s space object database, Seradata SpaceTrak, with more than 115,000 potentially in space by 2030. This level of commercialization underscores the need for high quality space surveillance and tracking data and purpose built solutions for making space operations safer.
