Astranis Space Technologies Corp., doing business as Astranis, is a private American geostationary communications satellite operator and manufacturer headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was founded by chief executive officer John Gedmark and Chief Technical Officer Ryan McLinko. In 2018, Astranis launched DemoSat-2, a prototype 3U cubesat to test the company's Software-Defined Radio (SDR) technology for its larger communications satellites. Astranis came out of

stealth mode In business, stealth mode is a company's temporary state of secretiveness, usually undertaken to avoid alerting competitors to a pending product launch or another business initiative. When an entire company is in stealth mode it may attempt to ...

with their March 2018 announcement of a $13.5 million fundraising round to support their development of smaller geostationary communications satellites led by

Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen ...

., marking the firm's first investment in a space company. In January 2019, Astranis announced their first commercial program, a partnership with Pacific Dataport, Inc. to triple the satellite internet capacity of Alaska. The satellite is scheduled to begin service in 2021, and is estimated to be 350 kg, roughly an order of magnitude smaller than existing geostationary satellites. Astranis has raised over $350 million in venture capital and venture debt financing from Andreessen Horowitz,

Venrock Venrock (portmanteau of Venture and Rockefeller) is a venture capital firm formed in 1969 to build upon the successful investing activities of the Rockefeller family that began in the late 1930s. It has offices in Palo Alto, California, New York ...

BlackRock BlackRock, Inc. is an American Multinational corporation, multi-national investment company based in New York City. Founded in 1988, initially as a Enterprise risk management, risk management and fixed income institutional asset manager, BlackR ...

, and other investors. The company was part of the Winter 2016 cohort of the

Y Combinator Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, Str ...

accelerator.

Demonstration Satellite

On January 12, 2018, Astranis flew its first satellite, “DemoSat 2,” on an Indian

PSLV-XL The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is an expendable medium-lift launch vehicle designed and operated by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It was developed to allow India to launch its Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellites ...

rocket. DemoSat 2 was a 3U cubesat (10 cm x 10 cm x 30 cm; less than 3 kg) that held an Astranis-built Software-Defined Radio (SDR) as its primary payload.

Partnership with Pacific Dataport

Astranis announced a partnership with Pacific Dataport, Inc., a subsidiary of Microcom, Alaska's largest satellite TV provider, on January 16, 2019. The mission of this partnership is to launch a geostationary communications satellite dedicated to Alaska. Astranis will launch this first satellite, named Arcturus, via

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...

Falcon Heavy Falcon Heavy is a partially reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle that is produced by SpaceX, an American aerospace manufacturer. The rocket consists of two strap-on boosters made from Falcon 9 first stages, a center core also made from a Falc ...

rocket with a launch window beginning in early 2022.

Funding

Astranis has raised over $350 million in venture financing. They closed an $13.5 million Series A equity investment led by Andreessen Horowitz on March 1, 2018, and a $90 million Series B investment on February 13, 2020 led by

and with continued participation from Andreessen Horowitz. The Series B financing included $40 million of equity financing and $50 million of debt financing. Astranis also raised a $250 million Series C financing round led by BlackRock in 2021. Astranis was part of the Winter 2016 cohort of the Y Combinator accelerator.

References

{{reflist Space Communications satellite operators