SAN FRANCISCO – Canadian space entrepreneurs searching for to lift $500,000 to $20 million are invited to hitch the 2024 SoCal-Canadian Space Accelerator.
The 2-month virtual accelerator is backed by the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, the Canadian Space Agency and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. In February and March, Canadian entrepreneurs admitted to the accelerator shall be introduced to potential industry, government and enterprise capital partners.
The SoCal-Canadian Space Accelerator will culminate in April with two in-person pitch events. One shall be in Pasadena, California. The second shall be on the Canadian Space booth on the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.
“Space is considered one of those sectors where we see a variety of strategic opportunity for collaboration between Canada and the US,” Michael Willmott, senior trade commissioner for the Consulate General of Canada in Los Angeles told “It is a positive example of how we prefer to introduce Canadian innovators to business partnerships in the US and all over the world.”
Mandala Space Ventures
The 2024 SoCal-Canadian Space Accelerator accelerator shall be run by Mandala Space Ventures, a Pasadena, California, firm established in 2021 by Leon Alkalai, a retired NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory technical fellow with a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Mandala Space Ventures is a enterprise studio, meaning it incubates and accelerates startups along with forming its own corporations.
“Our fundamental feature differentiating ourselves from others is the big variety of years we have now collectively in spaceflight,” Alkalai said. “We’re hardcore rocket scientists and engineers. We all know what works and what doesn’t in space.”
Why Southern California?
Canada has “a lot of very modern” startups “on the lookout for not only the standard public sector partners but in addition private sector partners to bring their technology into the broader space ecosystems,” Willmott said.
Maddie Morris, Canadian trade commissioner in Los Angeles added, “The federal government of Canada is proud to discover Southern California because the ecosystem that we wish to give attention to to assist support and grow our own ecosystem interests through partnership opportunities with corporates, NewSpace corporations, VCs, NASA JPL and other public-sector partners.”
Previous Payload Accelerator
Canada’s Consulate General in Los Angeles supported a space technology accelerator in 2022 thank linked Canadian startups with legacy and NewSpace corporations. The 2022 accelerator, also backed by the Canadian Space Agency and Arizona State University’s Milo Space Science Institute, focused on technical proposals for spacecraft payloads.
“The project teams were limited to the creation of a technical proposal for in-space product validation of a hardware technology,” Morris said by email. “Whereas this [2024] program is a full-fledged space-tech startup accelerator.”
Canadian agencies and Mandala are casting a large net for the 2024 accelerator.
It’s open to Canadian space startups thinking about “Earth remark, emissions monitoring, low-earth orbit, small satellites, flight-path optimization, artificial intelligence, deep space, space manufacturing, space mining, astronaut health” and related topics, Morris said.
Applications are due Nov. 22.