Money talks. And X-Bow Launch Systems, a company with technology to create rocket motors with a 3D printer, now has lots of it.
The Albuquerque company, which was previously operating in stealth, announced this week it raised a $27 million Series A round led by Crosslink Capital and Razor's Edge Ventures. Albuquerque's ABQid Fund and the Ingenuity Venture Fund also invested in X-Bow, which previously registered a $2.4 million seed round.
X-Bow's round was one of the larger investment rounds in recent memory for New Mexico. Other noteworthy deals include a $5 million round from Build With Robots and a $6 million round from BioFlyte.
With the Series A money in hand, X-Bow can take an "18 to 24 month look ahead" in terms of the technology and hiring, CEO Jason Hundley told Business First. Though X-Bow's printing tech has already been developed, it can be continually updated and optimized.
"To us, this is just a larger amount of capital to reinvest in ourselves," said Hundley, a veteran in aerospace and tech development. "We are still working to get our name and to get ourselves established in the marketplace."
X-Bow was initially based in Huntsville, Alabama, but moved to New Mexico in 2019. Nowadays, the company is trying to prove its "modular boost system" for rockets. Hundley described the effort as a different take on sounding rockets, which are designed to take measurements during flight.
"What we've seen in the traditional current sounding rockets is ... sort of a reverse engineering exercise where I am typically taking an existing motor, then I'm taking another existing motor and then I am trying to retrofit the system for a specific mission," Hundley said.
In terms of New Mexico, X-Bow has moved into new facilities in Albuquerque, though it has also built a presence in Socorro. X-Bow has about 50 to 70 employees with a mix of part-time and full-time positions.
Hundley declined to comment on whether X-Bow is still considering — or has moved forward on — plans to expand into Albuquerque's Max Q development near Kirtland Air Force Base.
Some firms have announced they've begun expanding to Max Q, such as Northrop Grumman. The aerospace company broke ground earlier this month on a 25,000-square-foot facility that is expected to be completed in February of next year. Another firm, BlueHalo, signaled its intent to expand to MaxQ, only to pull the plug on those plans.
As for Hundley, he said he previously worked at Northrop Grumman. Eventually, he founded X-Bow with chief revenue officer Maureen Gannon, CTO Max Kozoff, CFO Yasmin Seyal and senior vice president Mark Kaufman.
For Gannon's part, she was an original founder at Firefly Space Systems, which eventually rebooted as a separate rocket company called Firefly Aerospace.
