Startups & Funding
The Exploration Company raises $450M to build a European heavy-lift rocket
The Exploration Company has raised $450 million in what it calls the largest-ever Series C by a European space company, aiming to build a reusable heavy-lift launcher to rival SpaceX.
As it becomes clear that SpaceX can’t be the sole answer to growing demand for orbital launches, other companies are raising money to compete. The Exploration Company (TEC), which operates out of Germany, France, Luxembourg, Spain, and Italy, has raised $450 million in what it describes as the largest-ever Series C by a European space company — even as U.S. rival Stoke Space is separately raising a $1 billion Series E. Investors on both sides of the Atlantic are betting on reusable spacecraft, a category SpaceX pioneered but that many players, public and private, now think it shouldn’t control alone as space gains strategic importance.
Led by Hélène Huby, a French national who spent two decades at Airbus and ArianeGroup, TEC intends to use the funding to build the foundation for a reusable European heavy-lift launcher offering an alternative to SpaceX. According to Atomico, TEC has 10 Nyx missions booked, with more than $2 billion in contracts and commitments, including from institutional partners such as the European Space Agency and NASA. The Series C was co-led by Atomico and the EQT-managed Scaleup Europe Fund, alongside Bessemer Venture Partners, whose partner Alex Ferrara will join TEC’s board.
TEC’s most immediate focus is Nyx, a reusable cargo-and-crew capsule akin to SpaceX’s Dragon; the company aims to have it dock with the soon-to-be-retired International Space Station and return safely to Earth by November 2028. Funding will also support Storm, a rocket-engine program, and Huby said the company still needs more money to build a launch pad and the rocket itself. Huby said she would love to see Europe add human spaceflight to its roadmap, but that she couldn’t convince investors to spend $4 billion on a crew capsule and “then wait 10 years” — which is why TEC’s pragmatic, tighter timeline relies on private capital.
TEC wouldn’t be the first European commercial space company to launch a rocket — Germany’s Isar Aerospace crossed that milestone from Norway last weekend — but Huby said TEC intends to build a much bigger rocket than Isar’s expendable Spectrum vehicle, using full-flow stage combustion, the same reusability technology as SpaceX and Stoke.
Why it matters
Parallel European and American billion-dollar-scale rounds for reusable rockets suggest investors see room for multiple winners in orbital launch, even as none has yet matched SpaceX’s full reusability.