Space is an increasingly crowded place thanks to the constant influx of new satellites, and it’s only getting more cramped as the cost of getting into orbit decreases.
This dynamic has drawn attention to startup Northwood Space, which has spent the past several years developing a more modern and efficient ground communications infrastructure. The startup capitalized on this interest in two ways this week.
The El Segundo, Calif.-based company announced Tuesday that it has closed a $100 million Series B funding round, led by Washington, D.C.-based Washington Harbor Partners (which has been in the race of space investments) and co-directed by Andreessen Horowitz.
Northwood also secured a $49.8 million contract with the U.S. Space Force to help improve the so-called “satellite control network,” which “manages a wide variety of consequential space missions for our government,” including tracking and controlling GPS satellites, founder and CEO Bridgit Mendler said on a call with reporters.
The funding round and government contract are major milestones for the company, which is only a few years old and only closed its $30 million Series A less than a year ago.
But with so much interest in financing space technology, hard technology and defense technology right now, Mendler said this is an opportunity for his company to grow responsibly and quickly.
“Yes, it’s happening faster than we thought — you know, two fundraisers in the same year and large amounts of capital money,” she said. But, she emphasized, “this is really what we are ready for from a production standpoint.”
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Mendler also said the new capital will help Northwood keep pace with growing demand, marking an “inflection point in the business.”
“We get customers all the time who ask us for a ground solution, who want us to help them think through a ground problem with them, and we don’t want there to be a resource constraint that prevents us from being able to support that mission,” she said. “And so resources have been mobilized very intentionally at this point to support the missions that lie ahead.”
Part of the attention on Northwood has to do with the fact that what it does – making smaller phased array antenna systems intended to support or replace older systems that rely on larger satellite dishes – remains new, especially as a vertically integrated play.
But as the volume of data transmitted to and from satellites is likely to continue to grow, it’s an advantage Mendler wants to exploit.
“It’s a difficult thing to do. It requires a lot of risk, a lot of capital. It requires bringing together a very diverse skill set, to be able to really understand the whole field. [station] problem,” Mendler said. “And so yeah, it’s a big undertaking for us to take on, and our bet is that if we can actually do it, if we can really think about the floor holistically under one roof, then it produces a ton of value for the industry, and it’s really the right model to have.”
This pitch has made sense to potential business customers for some time now. Companies like SpaceX and Amazon, which have massive satellite internet networks in the works, are building and operating their own ground stations. But capacity is limited for other players who generally have to rent space from third-party providers who are not always available.
Griffin Cleverly, Northwood’s chief technology officer, expects the increased capacity — which the new fundraising will help create — to be most valuable to customers who are “scaling up to large constellations, so that could range from one or two satellites to dozens or more.”
Currently, Northwood’s “portal” sites can handle eight satellite links, he said. However, by the end of 2027, he expects Northwood’s next generation of ground stations to handle 10 to 12, with the company’s overall network capable of communicating with “hundreds” of satellites.
With the Space Force contract, what Northwood is selling has clearly become an attractive option for the government.
It is not surprising, however, that the new branch of the armed forces begins with the Satellite Control Network (SCN). In 2023, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report noted that the Department of Defense has been aware of SCN capacity issues since 2011.
“Satellite users who rely on the SCN and whom GAO interviewed said this increased demand, and resulting limits on system availability, could jeopardize their missions in the future,” the report said.
