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Image Credits: True Anomaly
True Anomaly has closed $100 million in new funding, a strong signal that the appetite for startups operating at the intersection of space and defense is far from abating.
The new round was led by Riot Ventures, with participation from Eclipse, ACME Capital, Menlo Ventures, Narya, 645 Ventures, Rocketship.vc, Champion Hill Ventures and FiveNine Ventures. The funds will be used to continue scaling all parts of the business, according to a press release.
True Anomaly is looking to fill a critical gap in space situational awareness and defensive operations through software and hardware, including the line of autonomous reconnaissance and pursuit spacecraft called Jackal. These vehicles are equipped with a suite of sensors and cameras to track, surveil and collect data on objects in space. On the software side, the company has developed an integrated operating platform called Mosaic, which will eventually be able to work in tandem with on-orbit Jackals.
In previous interviews with TechCrunch, True Anomaly CEO Even Rogers called out what he sees as a critical “information asymmetry” between the U.S. and its adversaries in space. Jackal, Mosaic, and the company’s other work in space domain awareness are meant to close that gap.
The startup, founded by a quartet of ex-Space Force members in 2022, has been moving quickly toward this goal. In the first full year of operations, the company opened a 35,000-square foot facility in Centennial, Colorado and doubled its staff to more than 100 employees.
In September, True Anomaly landed a $17.4 million contract from the U.S. Space Force to build a suite of space domain awareness capabilities, including helping the warfighter find and track objects in space, characterizing that object, and using artificial intelligence to predict and identify changes in the object’s behavior.
The first two Jackal spacecraft are scheduled to launch on SpaceX’s Transporter-10 ride-share mission in March. In August, the company got the green light from regulators to perform non-Earth imaging and to demonstrate in-space rendezvous proximity operations with the two spacecraft. It’s an enormous technical challenge, so no doubt many people in both Silicon Valley and Washington will be paying close attention to how the demonstration mission shakes out.
