European Space Startups Challenge SpaceX as Investors Back Reusable Rocket Ventures

The queue to send objects into orbit is growing, but space infrastructure isn’t keeping up with demand. As the realization sinks in that Elon Musk’s SpaceX can’t be the sole answer, other companies are raising their hand — and money.

These include The Exploration Company (TEC), which operates out of Germany, France, Luxembourg, Spain and Italy, and which has raised $450 million in what it describes as “the largest-ever Series C by a European space company.” But the race is global, with U.S-based rival Stoke Space currently raising a $1 billion Series E round.

Rivalry aside, these rounds show that investors on both sides of the Atlantic are willing to back companies seeking to build reusable spacecraft. That’s a category pioneered by SpaceX, but that many players, both public and private, now believe it shouldn’t solely control as space gains strategic importance.

These sovereignty-related concerns create extra tailwinds for an EU-headquartered company like TEC. Led by Hélène Huby, a French national who spent two decades at Airbus and ArianeGroup, the company intends to use its funding to build the foundation for a reusable European heavy-lift launcher offering an affordable alternative to SpaceX.

SpaceX itself may have no other choice but to loosen its nascent monopoly on low-earth-orbit launches to prioritize its own payloads; reports suggest that its Falcon rockets are already increasingly reserved for its Starlink satellites, amid uncertainty as to what will happen when these get retired in favor of Starship.

This creates demand that TEC won’t be able to meet for years, even if it sticks to its self-admittedly ambitious timeline. According to Atomico, “10 Nyx missions are booked,” with “more than $2 billion in contracts and commitments.”

Some of these commitments come from institutional partners including the European Space Agency, but also NASA. Its Series C was also transatlantic, with Atomico, and the EQT-managed Scaleup Europe Fund co-leading the round alongside Bessemer Venture Partners, whose partner Alex Ferrara will join TEC’s board of directors.

This latest round also consolidates TEC’s status as a company mostly funded by private investors, and one that plans accordingly. In a press conference earlier today, Huby said that she’d love to see Europe add human space flight to its roadmap, but wouldn’t be able to convince VCs to spend $4 billion towards a crew capsule, “then wait 10 years.”

So, TEC’s timeline is more pragmatic, but it is tight. Its most immediate focus is Nyx, a reusable capsule akin to SpaceX’s Dragon and capable of carrying cargo, then people. The company intends to get Nyx to dock with the soon-to-be-retired International Space Station and return safely to Earth by November 2028.

According to Huby, funding from the Series C will stretch to also fund Storm, a rocket engine program paving the way for further developments, at least initially. “Where we need more money is to build a launch pad, and to build the rocket itself,” she told journalists.

TEC wouldn’t be the first European commercial space company to launch a rocket — German startup Isar Aerospace crossed that milestone out of Norway last weekend. Huby praised the feat as “great news for the whole ecosystem,” but said that TEC intends to build a much bigger rocket than Isar’s expandable Spectrum vehicle.

However, Isar also has “a much bigger” launch vehicle in its roadmap, Ars Technica reported — presumably for the same reason Huby gave as to why TEC does. “In the next five to 10 years, half of our broadband communication could come from space, data centers could be in space; […] and if this is the case, we need massive rockets and cadence.”

That cadence will rely on reusability, which TEC plans to reach by using the same technology as SpaceX and Stoke: full-flow stage combustion “It’s the most difficult, but also the most efficient engine cycle in the world. It is the first time ever in Europe that a company develops such a rocket engine,” Huby said.

TEC’s advances haven’t gone unnoticed in Europe, with French president Macron and the European Commission’s president Ursula von der Leyen both praising its Series C. It is also not a coincidence that it was disclosed on the eve of the International Space Summit in Paris, where Huby hinted that related announcements will be made.