True Anomaly just scored an enormous chunk of change to proceed developing its space security tech.
The Colorado-based startup announced on Tuesday (Dec. 12) that it raised $100 million in a “Series B” round of funding led by Riot Ventures.
The cash “will likely be used for continued investment in people, services and products to further advance True Anomaly’s national security space technology offerings on the intersection of hardware, software and AI,” True Anomaly representatives said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.
True Anomaly, which was founded in 2022, goals to assist make space a safer and more sustainable environment for a big selection of stakeholders. The corporate also desires to help the USA retain its status because the world’s preeminent space power, within the face of accelerating competition with China.
“The corporate empowers the U.S. government, its allies, and partners in addition to the business space industry to guide secure, resilient operations on orbit to secure life on Earth,” True Anomaly wrote in a statement on Tuesday.
Though the corporate is young, it has already secured a powerful amount of funding through investments and contracts. For instance, True Anomaly representatives announced in April that that they had raised $30 million thus far, including $17 million in “Series A” funding. (The Series A round comes just after the initial “seed capital.” Series B, as its name suggests, comes after Series A.)
And, in September, the corporate revealed that it had won a $17.4 million Small Business Innovation Research contract from the U.S. Space Force.
Under that award, True Anomaly will provide the Space Force with “a set of Space Domain Awareness (SDA) applications that may leverage powerful analytics and scalable AI to support human-machine teaming for improved efficiency across the spectrum of SDA operations,” True Anomaly representatives said in a Sept. 21 statement. “This will likely be delivered through True Anomaly’s Mosaic software — an integrated operating system for each aspect of space domain awareness and security.”
True Anomaly also builds spacecraft — specifically, an autonomous vehicle called Jackal that is “designed for live and simulated rendezvous and proximity operations,” in line with the corporate’s website.
The primary two Jackals are scheduled to launch to Earth orbit next yr, on SpaceX’s Transporter-10 rideshare mission. That initial mission will test Jackal’s various tracking and rendezvous systems. If all goes well, True Anomaly could eventually send hundreds of satellites up, to assist the U.S. military keep tabs on the various objects and goings-on in orbit, Wired magazine wrote earlier this yr.