Hyperspace Challenge, an aerospace-focused business accelerator run by the Air Force Research Laboratory and CNM Ingenuity — an entrepreneurship nonprofit associated with Central New Mexico Community College — on Thursday announced the six companies it's selected for its 2023 program cohort.
Those six companies come from three different continents and include:
- Phase Four, an in-space propulsion technology company based in Hawthorne, California, that raised a $26 million Series B round in June 2021.
- Dawn AeroSpace, a satellite propulsion and space launch company based in Delft, The Netherlands that announced a $20 million funding round in late 2022.
- Lexset.ai, an artificial intelligence-back data creation company based in Brooklyn, New York, that's raised a few early financing rounds between $480,000 and $1.25 million according to PitchBook data.
- Magdrive, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, a spacecraft propulsion company based in Oxford, England, that closed a seed round of around $1.5 million in December 2020.
- TRL11, an aerospace video solutions technology company based in Irvine, California, that closed a pre-seed financing round of over $3 million earlier this year.
- High Earth Orbit Robotics, a space object monitoring company based in Haymarket, Australia, that raised an $8 million Series A round in August.
In total, 81 companies applied for this year's Hyperspace Challenge, which is the largest number of applicants the program has had in its six years of running, said Kelly Stafford, senior program manager for Hyperspace Challenge.
Hyperspace Challenge looked for companies with novel or surprising technologies that are further along in terms of their technology readiness levels, or TRLs, to be a part of the 2023 cohort, Stafford said. TRL is a method of understanding the maturity of any given technological innovation, including if it's ready for government or commercial application.
Previously, Hyperspace Challenge included companies with lower TRLs, or less mature technologies, Stafford said. She added a company's leadership team and its strategic plan — including its path to deployment — were other criteria the Challenge used when selecting participants.
Those criteria were built around a unique aspect of this year's Hyperspace Challenge program. The Challenge announced in mid-July that it's partnering with the U.S. Space Force Rapid Capabilities Office for its 2023 program.
That partnership will allow more direct conversations between companies and federal entities about their mission needs, something Kathy Steen, Hyperspace Challenge's former senior program manager, called "partnership acceleration" instead of the Challenge's previous focus on "business acceleration."
"What's exciting this year is that the Rapid Capabilities Office is looking to cultivate relationships with companies that have solutions that they can rapidly deploy to meet their mission needs," Steen told Albuquerque Business First in July. She's since left the organization to work with the Air Force Research Laboratory (ARFL).
Hyperspace Challenge recently finished onboarding the six companies and will begin virtual programming Tuesday, Oct. 10. That programming includes meetings between representatives from the companies and different industry stakeholders and subject matter experts, Stafford, the Challenge's current senior program manager, told Business First on Thursday.
Representatives from the six companies will get the chance to travel to Albuquerque for an in-person event on Nov. 1 and 2, which will be hosted at Q Station, a coworking space located in Albuquerque's Nob Hill district run in part by AFRL. While Nov. 2 will have closed events, Hyperspace Challenge plans to host a networking event on Nov. 1 that will be open to the public through registering ahead of time, Stafford said.
"I can't wait to meet [the companies] and build those relationships," she said. "The whole idea behind this event is to build relationships that will hopefully grow into some bigger things down the road.
"That's one of the things that I enjoy the most," Stafford continued. "Learning what they need, what challenges they're facing, and then helping them work through those things. And having fun doing it."
Hyperspace Challenge is made up of a four-person core team with a number of other "satellite people," she said.
The overarching goal of the 2023 program is to help grow technologies to meet some of the "greatest space challenges," Matt Fetrow, the U.S. Space Force Rapid Capabilities Office communications manager, said in a Thursday news release.
"We know that a diversity of perspectives and ideas propels innovation," he said in a statement. "So, we have high expectations that this cohort will arrive at solutions that would be indistinguishable without their wide range of experience and specialties."
