- Aerospace manufacturing and space transportation services company SpaceX has raised $1.9 billion in funding
Aerospace manufacturing and space transportation services company SpaceX has raised $1.9 billion in funding, according to an SEC filing discovered by Reuters. Bloomberg’s sources reported that this funding round was at a post-money valuation of $46 billion.
Last week, it was reported that SpaceX increased its investment size as it saw strong demand from investors. So the funding round was reportedly oversubscribed. According to Bloomberg, Fidelity Investments was one of the largest investors in the round.
This funding comes on the heels of SpaceX hitting some major milestones. For example, SpaceX was able to send a NASA crew to the International Space Station (ISS). That was the first crewed orbital flight from American soil in nearly a decade. The mission — which was called Demo-2 — took off from Florida in May and it returned to Earth earlier this month. This validated SpaceX’s ability to regularly supply transportation services to the ISS and back. More routine crewed missions to the ISS will happen starting in late October.
Plus SpaceX has been deploying a satellite constellation to provide commercial and broadband Internet services to remote areas. Earlier this week, SpaceX launched 58 satellites as part of the program. That was the eleventh batch and put the constellation at over 600 so far.
Another milestone accomplished by SpaceX was the closing of a $316 million defense contract with the U.S. government for launching military satellites over five years starting 2022. This contract was part of the government’s National Security Space Launch Phase 2 Launch Service Procurement program.
SpaceX is led by technology entrepreneur Elon Musk. Musk’s electric vehicle company Tesla Motors saw a jump in the stock price of more than 30% this past month. As a result, Elon Musk became the fourth richest person in the world with a net worth of over $95 billion, behind Jeff Bezos ($194 billion), Bill Gates ($122 billion), and Mark Zuckerberg ($102 billion).
