(Bloomberg) -- Firefly Aerospace Inc. has raised $175 million in a fresh round of funding, valuing the Texas rocket and spacecraft builder at more than $2 billion.
New investor RPM Ventures led the latest capital injection, part of a Series D funding round. Firefly Aerospace’s valuation is up from $1.8 billion after closing its last funding in November of 2023.
Other new investors include GiantLeap Capital and Human Element, the company said Tuesday in a statement, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report.
Firefly Chief Executive Officer Jason Kim said the company has used earlier funding rounds to more than double its rocket facility’s footprint and add more machinery to build its rockets and spacecraft structures.
Now the company is focused on scaling up launches.
“You’ve seen proof points of how we can move really fast and efficiently deploy the capital,” Kim said in an interview. “For Series D, it’s more expansion, because we want to get to high-rate production.”
Firefly’s main operational rocket is Alpha, a small satellite launcher, which has flown twice fully successfully out of five missions. Alpha only launched twice in 2023 and once in 2024, though, and Kim said the goal is to fly as many as six Alpha missions in 2025.
In addition to Alpha, Firefly is co-developing a larger rocket with Northrop Grumman Corp. called the Medium Launch Vehicle, which is supposed to enter service in 2026 and serve as a more direct competitor to SpaceX’s industry-leading Falcon 9 rocket. The company is separately developing a spacecraft called Elytra that is designed to service other satellites already in orbit.
In the coming months, Firefly aims to launch its first robotic lunar lander, Blue Ghost, which is set to fly on a Falcon 9 and carry a suite of NASA experiments and instruments to the moon.
“We have successfully completed all environment testing of our Blue Ghost 1,” Kim said, adding that the lander is now back at the company’s headquarters in Austin before it will be shipped to Florida for its launch.
Earlier this year, Firefly’s investors were at one point considering a sale of the company. Meanwhile, Firefly has found success with raising more capital at a time when other aerospace companies have struggled to find much-needed lifeline funding — something Kim attributes to how Firefly is structured.
“We’re one of three new space companies that have orbital flights under our belts, that launch rockets, as well as build spacecraft and operate spacecraft,” Kim said, the other two companies being Rocket Lab and SpaceX.
(Updates with names of additional new investors in second paragraph; an earlier version of this story corrected the number of times Alpha launched in 2023.)
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