spacecraft manufacturing company Apex emerging from
stealth with a $7.5 million seed round
led by Andreessen Horowitz
Well,
Apex says it manufacturers spacecraft
for both commercial and government customers
and its first product is the area's satellite bus which can launch payloads
into low earth orbit and beyond for a wide variety of missions.
So joining me now is Ian Cinnamon, co founder and Ceo of Apex.
Ian thanks so much for coming on the show. This is really cool.
Tell me more about your company.
Of course it's amazing to be here.
So at a very high level there's been a tremendous amount of innovation
in the space economy over the course of the last several decades.
But really in the last few years there's been a tremendous
amount of money that's been invested into the launch vehicles.
So we've seen tremendous success from companies like SpaceX and
Rocket Lab and Astra and Firefly and so many more.
And the result of that is the cost to
get something up into orbit has massively declined.
The result of that means there's more and more companies that want to then launch
their payloads up into space and are able to then monetize that as they monetize that
these payloads require spacecraft that they're actually hosted on.
So typically when you think of a satellite, it really comes down to two components,
it's the payload which might be a camera, a sensor, a robotic arm.
It could be a human life support module,
a variety of different objects And then the other part is
what's known as the satellite bus or the spacecraft platform.
And that bus wraps around that payload and it provides
it with everything it needs to survive in space.
So traditionally when you think of a satellite,
you think of a metal structure with solar panels, some propulsion a cam,
that camera's the payload. Everything else is what's known as the satellite bus.
And at apex we manufacture those satellite busses.
So we're responding to the massive growing demand both from the commercial and
government sectors and providing the industry
with these much needed spacecraft platforms.
Again known as satellite busses.
Okay, so 7.5 million in to develop and disperse your satellite busses
as you call them. How specifically are you going to use this new money?
So the capital is really going towards staffing up our team,
accomplishing some of our large technical milestones showing that
we can actually build these busses at scale.
We do of course plan to hire a significant
number of people in our Los Angeles based offices.
So we're very much looking forward to growing the team over the coming months.
I'm sure your team is very excited about that as well.
What's the timeline in terms of partnerships launches in
that we can see some of these busses in low earth orbit.
Yes,
so the very first launch that we're looking for right now is in the first half of 2024.
So that's within 18 months from now.
We're very excited to be able to launch the areas bus for the very first time.
Show what's known as flight heritage in the industry
proved that it's able to work from there.
We do have capacity to deliver five additional satellite busses in 2020 for
scaling up from their 20 busses in 2025 and 100 busses in 2026.
What is the kind of capital in that it takes to scale a company like yours?
It's so impressive. I mean, space is a whole new frontier.
I'm sure it does come with a lot of costs and a lot of resources involved. Absolutely.
So, of course, uh there's hardware involved. It's a capital intense environment.
You're not able to do this
for as low cost as you could do a traditional software only company.
The nice thing though about spacecraft platforms and
satellite busses is it does not require hundreds of
millions of dollars in order to be able to
actually build these busses and get to space.
Um with the money that we've raised,
it's actually sufficient capital to be able to fly
our first mission and get it up into orbit.
And then additional capital that we will end up raising.
Just helps us move faster and scale faster and ramp up manufacturing. Alright.
Ian cinnamon ceo of apex Space.
Ian, congratulations and thanks for coming on the show