In a recap of its first five years of existence, Redmond, Wash.-based Xplore reports that it’s received $16.2 million in venture funding and contracts to support its satellite-based drive to offer “Space as a Service.”
“Xplore employs around 20 people and is actively growing,” Lisa Rich, Xplore’s co-founder and chief operating officer, said in emailed comments to GeekWire. “This funding will help us grow as our programs grow.”
Today’s status report doesn’t provide a breakdown of the funding rounds, but it does note that in addition to venture capital, the startup has brought in roughly $4 million in “non-dilutive funding” over the past couple of years.
That category of funding includes contracts from the U.S. Air Force, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The biggest contract, announced last September, is providing $2 million from National Security Innovation Capital to speed up work on Xplore’s Xcraft satellite platform. NSIC is a hardware development accelerator within the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit.
Xplore also provided a fresh list of its investors, including Alumni Ventures, Brightstone Venture Capital, Gaingels, Helios Capital, Kingfisher Capital, KittyHawk Ventures, Lombard Street, Private Shares Fund, Starbridge Venture Capital and Tremendous View — plus Dylan Taylor, CEO of Voyager Space, who took a suborbital space ride on Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship in December.
