Impulse Space, a startup founded by SpaceX motor guru Tom Mueller to build highly maneuverable spacecraft, this week announced a $500 million Series D round that it will use to hire up to 200 new employees.
The round, led by 137 Ventures and BANNER VC, with participation from Founders Fund, Lux Capital and Linse Capital, reflects investor interest in space and defense technology as the US government spends money on national security issues and SpaceX prepares for its IPO.
The momentum is focused on mobility in space. The company has developed a highly maneuverable platform called Mira, aimed at US Space Force buyers. It is also building a vehicle called Helios, designed to rapidly transport satellites into high orbits after launching them into near-Earth space.
President and COO Eric Romo told TechCrunch that the new capital will help the company build and test more space vehicles, highlighting the company’s hiring plans at a time when aerospace talent is in high demand.
While the company’s software teams are embracing AI-powered coding tools, Romo said deep learning models aren’t quite ready for prime time when it comes to solving real-world engineering problems. As the 13th employee at SpaceX in 2003, Romo’s job was to create computer simulations of the company’s engine design to evaluate its performance.
“If I was within 20% of the correct answer, I considered it a success because the simulations weren’t that good,” Romo said. “They’ve improved, but not that much, and so there’s really no substitute for designing something, analyzing it, building it, and then bringing it to the test bench.”
Romo suspects that AI tools for hardware design may be slower to arrive because proper training data is hard to find compared to the amount of text and code available online to teach LLMs. “If you want to go, say, find the best designs for a turbo pump seal package in the world, you’re not going to find them online,” he said.
Impulse began with a focus on propulsion and evolved to build spacecraft, requiring the company to add more expertise in the form of engineers building vehicle structures and flight computers. One of the reasons the company recently opened an office in Colorado is that aerospace talent has more options today — engineers can find work in Seattle, Denver or Texas instead of going to Los Angeles.
Next up for the company is the next launch of the Mira spacecraft, which made its third flight late last year. This flight was not without incident – a problem with his navigation system caused him to use up most of his fuel reserve early. Romo said the company is developing a new Mira mission that is expected to launch by the end of the year.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This does not affect our editorial independence.
