one of the main bottlenecks<\/a> facing the growth of the space industry was satellite bus manufacturing. Cinnamon and his cofounder, Maximilian Benassi, are aiming to essentially productize (i.e. manufacture and sell in standard formats) satellite buses \u2014 which have historically been subject to bespoke engineering processes and very long lead times \u2014 and rapidly scale the ability for companies to send their payload to orbit.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe very innovations that have increased demand for access to space \u2014 namely the drop in launch costs thanks to SpaceX Falcon 9 ride-share missions \u2014 have also set the conditions for a productized spacecraft to win on the market. Up to a certain volume size, customers are paying the same for a ride to orbit \u2014 so Cinnamon and Benassi realized that spacecraft could be standardized, and even slightly over-engineered, with no additional cost by way of launch to the customer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Focusing on productization has generated a strong foundation for the business, Cinnamon said. \u201cFor every one of the satellite buses that we\u2019ve sold or are in the process of selling, we\u2019re able to very clearly point out, here\u2019s the selling price, here\u2019s our unit economics, here\u2019s the margin we have,\u201d he said. \u201cWe tend to be very transparent with our customers as well that we\u2019re not trying to be the lowest price on the market \u2026 we\u2019re occasionally able to charge a premium for a very fast delivery time frame.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
This clear economic picture no doubt proved compelling to investors. While there\u2019s been a lot of buzz around hard tech recently, \u201cinvestors still have that strong desire to put their money to work on businesses where they can really see the fundamentals,\u201d Cinnamon said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One tailwind for the company, according to Cinnamon, is that most customers are not interested in buying a single satellite, but in buying multiple, with purchases often extending over time as a constellation is built out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The company is approaching fifty people and that number is likely to double by the end of this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The funding round was led by early Apex investors XYZ Venture Capital, and co-led by CRV, along with participation from new investors Upfront, 8VC, Toyota Ventures, Point72 Ventures, Mirae Asset Capital, Outsiders Fund, GSBackers, and existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Shield Capital, J2 Ventures, Ravelin, Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt and Avalon Capital Group.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresh off the success of its first mission, satellite manufacturer Apex has closed $95 million in new capital to scale its operations.\u00a0 The Los Angeles-based startup successfully launched and commissioned its first spacecraft, a model called Aries, in March. That mission has gone off seemingly without a hitch \u2014 a rarity in the space industry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":104041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-104040","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}