The Exploration Company, a Munich-based startup building what it describes as Europe’s first reusable space capsule, is in talks to raise at least $300 million, according to reporting from the Financial Times. The round would value the six-year-old firm at more than $2 billion, more than quadrupling its previous valuation, though people familiar with the discussions cautioned that the financing has not been finalized and terms could still change or the deal could fall through entirely.
The Exploration Company is developing Nyx, a reusable capsule positioned as a European counterpart to SpaceX’s Dragon, designed to carry cargo, and eventually crew, to the International Space Station and the commercial stations expected to replace it. Founded in 2021 by Hélène Huby, a former head of Airbus’s space exploration business, the company has framed Nyx as a solution to Europe’s lack of a sovereign way to return cargo from orbit, a gap that has left European space agencies reliant on American and previously Russian hardware. The timing reflects the ISS’s planned retirement around 2030 and the anticipated need for supply and return capability to service the commercial stations meant to succeed it.
Among the investors in talks for the new round is the EU’s Scaleup Europe Fund, a vehicle managed by Swedish investment group EQT, which is reported to be nearing a commitment. The Exploration Company previously closed a $160 million Series B in November 2024, led by Balderton Capital and Plural with backing from French Tech Souveraineté and Germany’s DeepTech & Climate Fonds. The company has said it holds a contract backlog of roughly $770 million, with customers including Axiom Space, Vast, Starlab, and the European Space Agency.
The company has yet to successfully recover a capsule intact. Its most recent test flight, Mission Possible, launched on a SpaceX rideshare from Vandenberg Space Force Base in June 2025, reached orbit, and survived reentry before losing contact with the ground a few minutes before its planned splashdown, a result the company characterized as a “partial success.” An earlier flight, Mission Bikini, launched aboard the debut flight of Ariane 6 in July 2024, but an anomaly in the rocket’s upper stage left the demonstrator stranded and prevented the planned reentry test. Neither the company nor EQT had commented publicly on the funding talks at the time of the Financial Times’ report.
