A Chicago venture firm has raised a new fund to invest in space startups.
Promus Ventures announced it has raised $140 million for its new fund called Orbital Ventures, which will invest in early-stage space and geospatial companies around the world. Promus, which is known for investing in deep-tech and other moonshot startups, has made several space investments to date, including publicly traded Rocket Lab and Spire Global, along with satellite maker ICEYE.
Orbital Ventures is Promus' fifth venture capital fund, and its first sector-specific fund. Promus has so far made seven new investments from the Orbital Ventures fund.
"...when we started investing in space we were routinely told that our space investments would never work, these teams would require too much capital and their models were too difficult to execute," Mike Collett, Promus' founder and managing partner, wrote in a blog post. "Why would any early-stage venture capital firm invest in such capital-intensive sectors as space? We have been lucky to invest with incredible teams that found a way past these critiques from the cheap seats to build such terrific companies today."
Founded in Chicago in 2012, Promus also operates offices in San Francisco and Luxembourg. It has invested in 85 early-stage companies to date, including fitness tracker Whoop, security robot firm Cobalt Robotics, and autonomous kitchen startup Chef Robotics.
Promus' fund comes as the new tech space race heats up, with companies around the world building technologies to power and support the next phase of space exploration and travel. Cities like Houston, Austin and Dallas, for example, are seeing a growing group of tech upstarts aiming to boost the booming space sector. Venture funding for space tech has grown from $2 billion in 2017 to $6 billion last year, according to Crunchbase data. This year, investors have made $5.2 billion in deals already.
