PARIS – Techstars brought 12 startup to Los Angeles Sept. 11 to affix the 2023 Techstars Space Accelerator.
It’s Techstars’ first in-person Space Accelerator since 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted Techstars to conduct accelerators virtually in 2020 and 2021. Techstars ran a combined Aerospace and Defense Accelerator in Los Angeles in 2022.
Hitting the Road
Unlike in 2019 when Techstars Accelerator firms spent 12 weeks in Los Angeles, the 2023 class will travel. Entrepreneurs will spend time in Los Angeles, Colorado and Washington, D.C.
“LA remains to be an incredibly strong hub for our firms to construct relationships,” Matt Kozlov, Techstars Los Angeles managing director, told . “But after we ran this system virtually, we found that we were capable of herald remarkable mentors and leaders from other locations. And we found they tended to be clustered in Colorado and D.C.”
Los Angeles, Colorado and Washington, D.C. are primary hubs of U.S. leadership in business, civil and military aerospace and defense activity and investment, Kozlov said.
“If I may also help these 12 firms construct relationships with people in those three key cities, this system might be even higher,” Kozlov said.
Australia to Delaware
The 2023 Techstars Space Accelerator includes 11 U.S. and one Australian company.
- Aperion Space is a Huntington Beach, California, startup developing a totally reusable, medium-to-heavy class launch vehicle.
- closedloop, a San Ramon, California, firm that provides an operating system designed to simplify robotics development and maintenance for mission-critical applications.
- Esper Satellite Imagery is an Australian company constructing hyperspectral sensors to disclose Earth’s geology.
- San Francisco-based Gate Space, guarantees a Jetpack that “transforms immobile satellites into highly maneuverable, refuelable space assets.”
- iMetalX of Sausalito, California, intends to supply in-space servicing, space behavior monitoring and energetic debris removal for satellite operators, insurance providers, payload installers and government agencies.
- Chicago-based Iris Light Technologies, plans to work with chip designers that need integrated light sources.
- Little Place Labs of Houston “builds space-edge AI solutions to offer satellite analytics to end-users in lower than 7 minutes.”
- Denver-based Locus Lock Inc. provides global navigation satellite receivers to offer “secured-centimeter resolution” data for industrial and consumer products.
- Washington-based Magma Space guarantees to enhance satellite pointing with “ultra-stable” attitude determination and control subsystems.
- O Analytics, a Fairmont, West Virginia, startup focused on detecting and characterizing space objects.
- PierSight Space of Lewes, Delaware, is developing inexpensive, application-specific, backpack-sized satellite constellations to collect datasets including synthetic aperture radar and automatic identification system.
- Westwood Aerogel of Berkeley, California, provides “inexpensive aerogel-based thermal barriers, called ZeroTherm” to electric vehicle manufacturers “for increasing efficiency and thermal runaway protection inside battery packs.”
2019 Class
Techstars points to the success of its 2019 Space Accelerator. Participants in that class included Orbit Fab, Pixxel, Zeno Power Systems, Morpheus Space, Hydrosat and Solestial, firms which have attracted significant revenue and partnerships.