Tag: Stoke Space

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OpenAI CEO considers exploring the space data frontier

Stoke Space hotfire test of booster engine
Stoke Space’s Zenith booster engine blazes during a hot-fire test in 2024. (Stoke Space Photo)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is thinking about expanding into the final frontier for data centers, and his efforts to follow through on that thought reportedly turned into talks with Stoke Space, a rocket startup headquartered just south of Seattle.

Altman looked into putting together funding to invest in Stoke Space, with an eye toward either forging a partnership or ending up with a controlling stake in the company, according to an account published by The Wall Street Journal. The discussions reportedly began this summer and picked up in the fall, but are said to be no longer active.

Such a move would open up a new front in Altman’s competition with SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who has talked about scaling up Starlink V3 satellites to serve as data centers for AI applications. “SpaceX will be doing this,” Musk wrote in a post to his X social-media platform.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the Blue Origin space venture, has voiced a similar interest in orbital data centers — as has Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Google is partnering with Planet Labs on a space-based data processing effort known as Project Suncatcher.

The tech world’s appetite for data processing and storage is being driven by the rapidly growing resource requirements of artificial intelligence applications. Altman addressed the subject on Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend” podcast in July.

“I do guess that a lot of the world gets covered in data centers over time,” Altman said. “But I don’t know, because maybe we put them in space. Like, maybe we build a big Dyson sphere on the solar system and say, ‘Hey, it actually makes no sense to put these on Earth.’”

Citing unidentified sources, the Journal said Altman has been exploring the idea of investing in space ventures to follow through on that thought. Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space, which is working on a fully reusable rocket called Nova, reportedly became a focus of his interest.

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It’s official! Stoke Space raises $510M for its Nova rocket

Illustration: Stoke Space second stage in orbit
An artist’s conception shows Stoke Space’s reusable second stage in orbit. (Stoke Space Illustration)

Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space Technologies today revealed that it has raised $510 million in fresh funding to accelerate development of its fully reusable medium-lift Nova rocket.

The Series D funding round, let by Thomas Tull’s US Innovative Technology Fund, comes in conjunction with a $100 million debt facility led by Silicon Valley Bank. Stoke said the new financing has more than doubled its total capital raised, bringing the figure to $990 million.

“This funding gives us the runway to complete development and demonstrate Nova through its first flights,” Stoke co-founder and CEO Andy Lapsa said in a news release. If all goes according to plan, the first Nova rocket is expected to lift off next year from Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

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Stoke Space is reportedly raising sky-high funding

Stoke Space hotfire test of booster engine
Stoke Space’s Zenith booster engine blazes during a hot-fire test in 2024. (Stoke Space Photo)

Update: Stoke Space has raised $510 million in Series D funding to accelerate development of its fully reusable medium-lift rocket. Check out the full story.

Previously: Stoke Space, one of the Seattle area’s up-and-coming space startups, is said to be raising hundreds of millions of dollars in a funding round that it hasn’t yet publicly acknowledged. A report about the round, based on two unidentified sources, was published today by The Information.

The Information quoted its sources as saying that the funding round could total as much as $500 million, and would value Stoke at nearly $2 billion. That figure would be roughly twice as much as the $944 million valuation that was cited by Pitchbook as of January. The round’s lead investor is said to be Thomas Tull’s United States Innovative Technology Fund.

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Space Force adds Stoke and Rocket Lab to launch list

Illustration: Stoke Space Nova rocket in flight
An artist’s conception shows Stoke Space’s Nova rocket in flight. (Stoke Space Illustration)

The U.S. Space Force has added Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space and California-based Rocket Lab USA to the list of providers for its $5.6 billion round of national security launches.

Each company will receive a $5 million task order to assess its specific capabilities for future launches. Stoke and Rocket Lab join Jeff Bezos’ Kent-based Blue Origin space venture as well as SpaceX and United Launch Alliance on the Pentagon’s current launch service list, known as Phase 3 Lane 1. For this “lane,” the Space Force can select from those five providers during an ordering period that runs through mid-2029, with an option for a five-year extension.

Stoke Space is offering its fully reusable Nova rocket, while Rocket Lab is offering its Neutron rocket. Both of those launch vehicles are still in development and haven’t yet flown in space. Rocket Lab is planning its first Neutron launch in late 2025. Stoke’s first Nova launch could also come as early as this year.

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Stoke Space raises $260M for its fully reusable rocket

Stoke Space rocket engine test
Stoke Space’s rocket engine test lights up a vertical test stand in Moses Lake, Wash. (Stoke Space Photo)

Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space says it’s raised $260 million in a new founding round to finish the development of its fully reusable Nova rocket and complete construction of a launch complex in Florida.

Investors in the Series C funding round include Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Glade Brook Capital Partners, Industrious Ventures, Leitmotif, Point72 Ventures, Seven Seven Six, the University of Michigan, Woven Capital and Y Combinator. The fresh investment brings total funding to $480 million.

“We deeply appreciate the confidence investors have placed in Stoke and our mission,” Andy Lapsa, CEO and co-founder of Stoke Space, said today in a news release. “This new investment validates our progress and enables us to accelerate the development of technologies that will redefine access to and from space.”

The funding round comes just weeks after Stoke’s successful test firing of its first-stage Zenith rocket engine on a test stand at the company’s facility in Moses Lake, Wash. That hot-fire test of the full-flow staged combustion engine marked a significant step in the development of the two-stage Nova rocket, which is slated for its first orbital test flight as early as this year. Stoke tested the technology for its second stage in a brief up-and-down flight in 2023.

Meanwhile, the company is building out its launch facility at Space Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, the place where John Glenn’s milestone orbital flight began in 1962. The new funding round will support that work as well as enhancements to Stoke’s Kent HQ and Moses Lake test facility.

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Stoke Space CEO blazes a trail to total rocket reusability

Stoke Space CEO Andy Lapsa in front of propellant tank sections at rocket factory
Stoke Space CEO Andy Lapsa at the startup’s rocket factory in Kent, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

KENT, Wash. — Like two of the world’s best-known billionaires, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, Stoke Space CEO Andy Lapsa is passionate about making spaceships as reusable as airplanes.

“Part of the big thesis of the company is, how do you build a fully, rapidly reusable space vehicle that goes to space, performs a function, comes back and turns around and flies again,” he says. “That’s not a new vision. We’ve been dreaming about fully reusable spacecraft since the ’50s and ’60s, and probably before that. So the big question is, how do you do it?”

Unlike Bezos or Musk, Lapsa isn’t a billionaire. Instead, he made his case to backers who have billions of dollars to invest. Those backers include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, whose investments in Stoke have been made through Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a fund that focuses on clean-tech innovations for the climate challenge.

Rockets that fight climate change? That’s part of Lapsa’s uncommon perspective on the benefits of reusable rocket ships.

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Space Force gives a boost to Blue Origin and Stoke Space

Illustrations: Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket and Stoke Space's Nova rocket
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket and Stoke Space’s Nova rocket. (Blue Origin / Stoke Space Illustrations)

The U.S. Space Force has added Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture and Stoke Space, a startup that’s headquartered nearby in Kent, Wash., to a list of eligible providers for rapid-response, small-satellite launch services.

The designation means the two rocket companies are cleared to compete for launches under the terms of the Space Force’s Orbital Services Program 4.

“OSP-4 is available to our partners across the DoD [Department of Defense] with an emphasis on small orbital launch capabilities and launch solutions for Tactically Responsive Space mission needs,” Lt. Col. Steve Hendershot, chief of the Space Systems Command’s Small Launch and Targets Division, said in a news release.

The OSP-4 contract has a $986 million ceiling for tasks to be awarded through October 2028. Seven missions have been awarded to date, amounting to more than $190 million. Last year’s Victus Nox mission, conducted in partnership with Firefly Aerospace and Millennium Space Systems, serves as an example of an OSP-4 project. Victus Nox was aimed at testing the Space Force’s ability to replace a damaged satellite in a short time frame.

Neither Blue Origin nor Stoke Space has launched an orbital mission yet, but the OSP-4 program is open to emerging providers that expect to be able to send payloads to orbit within a year or so.

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Stoke Space’s new rocket engine passes its first fiery test

Stoke Space hotfire test of booster engine
Stoke Space’s Zenith booster engine blazes during a hot-fire test in 2024. (Stoke Space Photo)

Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space says it has successfully completed the first hot-fire test of the engine that will power the first stage of its reusable Nova launch vehicle.

The firing took place June 5 at Stoke’s testing site in Moses Lake, Wash., the startup said today in a news release. During the two-second test, the engine ramped up to its target starting power level, producing the equivalent of 350,000 hp in less than a second, and held that power level until shutdown. At full power, the full-flow staged combustion engine is designed to produce more than 100,000 pounds of thrust.

The rocket engine was designed and manufactured in just 18 months. The medium-lift Nova rocket’s first-stage booster will be powered by seven of the engines.

“We are incredibly proud of this achievement,” Stoke Space co-founder and CEO Andy Lapsa said. “Our team has worked tirelessly to bring this engine to life in record time. This successful test is a testament to their talent and dedication, and it puts us one big step closer to bringing the Nova launch vehicle to market. Nova has unique capabilities that give commercial, civil, and defense customers access to, through, and from space.”

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Stoke Space puts its rocket through a short but sweet hop

Stoke Space's test vehicle fires engine during test "hop"
Stoke Space’s Hopper2 developmental rocket vehicle fires its engine during a test “hop.” (Stoke Space Photo)

A four-year-old Seattle-area startup called Stoke Space executed a successful up-and-down test of its “Hopper” developmental rocket vehicle today, marking a major milestone in its quest to create a fully reusable launch system.

Hopper2’s 15-second flight took place at Stoke’s test facility at Grant County International Airport in Moses Lake, Wash., at 11:24 a.m. PT. A hydrogen-fueled rocket engine sent the test vehicle to a height of 30 feet, with a landing 15 feet away from the launch pad, Stoke CEO Andy Lapsa told me.

“It’s the last test in our development program for Hopper, and by all accounts, it’s been very successful,” Lapsa said.

Today’s test follows up on work that was done this spring with an earlier prototype, Hopper1, and a static engine firing for Hopper2 that was conducted this month.

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Stoke Space gets to use John Glenn’s launch pad

Illustration: Stoke Space second stage in orbit
An artist’s conception shows Stoke Space’s reusable second stage in orbit. (Stoke Space Illustration)

Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space says it’s won the go-ahead to take over the Florida launch complex where John Glenn began the trip that made him the first American in orbit in 1962.

That’s the upshot of the U.S. Space Force’s decision on Tuesday to allocate Space Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to Stoke Space for use as a launch operations center.

“We are over the moon excited by this opportunity,” Julia Black, Stoke Space’s director of launch operations, said in a news release. “To be trusted with the reactivation of the historic Launch Complex 14 is an honor, and we look forward to adding to its well-distinguished accomplishments for America’s space program.”

Space Launch Delta 45, which manages Cape Canaveral’s launch facilities, said the allocation is part of a new Space Force strategy to maximize the use of excess launch property and the Eastern Range extending from the Florida coast.

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