A fast-growing startup with ties to the region’s space flight history is relocating its headquarters within North Texas.
In a move to ramp up production to meet demands, EXOS Aerospace, a maker of reusable space vehicles, is planning on moving its Greenville-based operations to McKinney as it looks to focus on the commercial orbital market, according to its Co-founder and COO John Quinn.
“We will do air launch and helicopter recovery,” Quinn said. “That’s separating us from everybody else. We've got reusability with SpaceX and Blue Origin, we've got Virgin Galactic doing air launch, but nobody has reusable air launch. And that's where we're going. You really want to be flexible, and you want to get out of the way of aircraft. Right now, every time we do a ground launch, we interrupt air traffic, and you can't do that every day.”
The move is aided by the McKinney Economic Development Corporation’s Innovation Fund, which has been used to entice nearly 20 other tech startups to move to or grow in the city. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The funding will help EXOS, one of only a handful of U.S. companies with an active launch license, set up a 100,000 square-foot facility to produce its new orbital launcher. Quinn said the company has not yet finalized a site. EXOS has around 20 employees globally, with a current local team of 12. With the new facility, the company is looking to expand its headcount to more than 100.
Quinn said the McKinney location also provides closer proximity to larger players in the industry like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. He also notes that across the state, there is a large pool of talent in the space industry brought here by companies like SpaceX.
The timing of the relocation comes as EXOS, is creating the next generation of its orbital craft that is capable of delivering a payload in about 20 minutes. Previously, it was focused on vertical launches and is pivoting to flight launches. The company is aiming to get into the growing commercial space market.
According to Space.com, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson expects the International Space Station to be replaced with a commercial space station by 2030. Quinn said has received an memorandum of understanding (MOU) with a 30-month deadline to produce its new vehicle to help launch 10,000 satellites into space.
“With developing hundreds of rocket engines and dozens of flying vehicles under our belt puts us in a pretty strong position to kind of own a segment of the market,” Quinn said.
The timing also comes after EXOS, which has developed technology for NASA, received an Air Force SBIR Phase II contract to develop a suborbital reusable hypersonic launch craft, which Quinn said is a growing need for the Department of Defense.
The funding from the McKinney EDC comes amid a broader fundraising effort for the company. In May, the company entered into an MOU with London business consultancy Whitefield International and Georgia-based firm I & J International to lead a $200 million Series A funding round. Quinn declined to say how much the company has raised in the effort this far.
“We don't want $200 million, we want $200 million with a strategic investor who has a reason to be there when we go to the next round, to be able to build a larger launcher,” Quinn said.
EXOS was born out of former Mesquite-based commercial space flight startup Armadillo Aerospace, which was launched in 2000. The company found early success in Northrop Grumman’s Lunar Lander Challenge, but ultimately put on pause. Quinn, who was working alongside the Armadillo engineers to develop a submarine craft and didn’t want to see the space work left untouched, bought the assets of Armadillo in 2015. Between Armadillo’s initiatives and EXOS, Quinn said $20 million in outside funding has been raised for its technology.
“I said, these guys can't stop and found a way to commercialize (the technology) and go to a truly commercial focus on reusable rocket technologies,” Quinn said.
To meet its hiring goal in the hundreds, Quinn said some of that will likely be done through acquisitions. He hinted there are a couple of companies EXOS is looking at but declined to disclose names.
