Hypersonics and space venture investment rounds to note
Gettyimages.com / Andriy Onufriyenko
By
Ross Wilkers
The venture capital arms of RTX, Booz Allen Hamilton and the U.S. intelligence community are among the participants in here.
Hermeus
The hypersonic aircraft manufacturer has collected $350 million in Series C capital to support efforts at speeding up production and creating more prototypes.
Hermeus opened for business in 2018, then secured $60 million in funding from the Air Force and other venture investors to support the development of its Quarterhorse aircraft.
The company is shifting its corporate headquarters to El Segundo, California from Atlanta as the latter location becomes primarily a production hub.
Khlosa Ventures led the Series C round. RTX Ventures and In-Q-Tel, respectively the venture arms of the defense giant and intelligence community, are continuing on as existing investors. Canaan Partners, Founders Fund and Bling Capital also are staying involved.
New investors include Cox Enterprises and their venture fund Socium Ventures, Destiny Tech100, Georgia Tech Foundation, 137 Ventures and GSBackers. Debt capital is coming from First Citizen Bank’s Silicon Valley Bank division, Pinegrove Venture Partners, Hercules Capital and Trinity Capital.
Portal Space Systems
The maker of maneuverable spacecraft for operating between orbital regimes has fetched $50 million in Series A capital to accelerate the development of its platform and further build out manufacturing capacity.
Portal Space Systems emerged from stealth mode in 2024 and designs its Supernova spacecraft to be powered by solar thermal propulsion, a method validated at NASA and Air Force Research Laboratory programs but not commercialized.
Starburst is its maneuverable spacecraft bus that is built with functionalities in rendezvous and proximity operations, rapid orbital changes and retasking.
Portal closed its $17.5 million seed round in 2025 and has since advanced from early development to flight-tested systems.
Geodesic Capital and Mach 33 led the Series A round that also included Booz Allen Hamilton’s venture capital arm as a new investor. Ark Invest, AlleyCorp and FUSE are returning investors.
Starfish Space
The servicing vehicle maker has closed a $100 million Series B capital raise following a 2025 that saw it launch and operate three demonstration missions in orbit.
Starfish Space opened for business in 2019 and is pushing to fly its first full missions with the Otter vehicle later this year. Starfish’s contract backlog includes missions with Space Force, the Space Development Agency, NASA and the commercial satellite operator SES.
Otter is designed for use in life extension missions for geostationary orbit satellites and disposal missions for low-Earth orbit satellites.
Point72 Ventures, Activate Capital and Shield Capital co-led the Series B round, which included Industrious Ventures and NightDragon as major participants.
New investors included Nomi Capital, Gaingels, and Overlap Holdings. Existing investors returning to the fold include NFX, Munich Re Ventures, Toyota Ventures and PSL Ventures.