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SpinLaunch spins up a $35M round to continue building its space catapult
SpinLaunch, a company that aims to turn the launch industry on its head with a wild new concept for getting to orbit, has raised a $35M round B to continue its quest. The team has yet to demonstrate their kinetic launch system, but this year will be the year that changes, they claim.
TechCrunch first reported on SpinLaunch’s ambitious plans in 2018, when the company raised its previous $35 million, which combined with $10M it raised prior to that and today’s round comes to a total of $80M. With that kind of money you might actually be able to build a space catapult.
The basic idea behind SpinLaunch’s approach is to get a craft out of the atmosphere using a “rotational acceleration method” that brings a craft to escape velocity without any rockets. While the company has been extremely tight-lipped about the details, one imagines a sort of giant rail gun curled into a spiral, from which payloads will emerge into the atmosphere at several thousand miles per hour — weather be damned.
Naturally there is no shortage of objections to this method, the most obvious of which is that going from an evacuated tube into the atmosphere at those speeds might be like firing the payload into a brick wall. It’s doubtful that SpinLaunch would have proceeded this far if it did not have a mitigation for this (such as the needle-like appearance of the concept craft) and other potential problems, but the secretive company has revealed little.
The time for broader publicity may soon be at hand, however: the funds will be used to build out its new headquarter and R&D facility in Long Beach, but also to complete its flight test facility at Spaceport America in New Mexico.
“Later this year, we aim to change the history of space launch with the completion of our first flight test mass accelerator at Spaceport America,” said founder and CEO Jonathan Yaney in a press release announcing the funding.
Lowering the cost of launch has been the focus of some of the most successful space startups out there, and SpinLaunch aims to leapfrog their cost savings by offering orbital access for under $500,000. First commercial launch is targeted for 2022, assuming the upcoming tests go well.
The funding round was led by previous investors Airbus Ventures, GV, and KPCB, as well as Catapult Ventures, Lauder Partners, John Doerr and Byers Family.
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Kleiner Perkins gets back to early-stage with its $600M 18th fund
“KP used to be a small team doing hands-on company building. We’re moving away from being this institution with multiple products and really just focusing on early-stage venture capital,” Kleiner Perkins partner Ilya Fushman tells me. Indeed, 47 years after its founding, the storied venture fund is going “back to the future” with today’s announcement of an 18th fund — a $600 million fund for seed, Series A and Series B financings. It’s investing across consumer, enterprise, hard tech and fintech, looking for high-potential teams to help mold into unicorns.
Kleiner Perkins partner Ilya Fushman
“We went out to market to LPs. We got a lot of interest. We were significantly oversubscribed,” Fushman says of the firm’s raise.
Kleiner Perkins was recently rocked by the departure of legendary investor Mary Meeker. She took Kleiner partners Mood Rowghani, Noah Knauf and Juliet de Baubigny, and they’re reportedly raising a $1.25 billion growth fund called Bond. Fushman explained that with Kleiner refocusing on early-stage, their funds will be well-differentiated. “They’re going to focus on very late-stage growth,” while he described Kleiner fund 18 as a place where partners can “collaborate and create” alongside new startups.
Other trends Kleiner is seeking to invest in include better distributed work tools, infrastructure for technology businesses, shifts in the urban and economic landscape and security and identity tools to protect the software-enabled future. Recent early-stage investments from the firm have included tax and insurance safety net Catch and food stamps app Propel.
With the explosion of early-stage funds, competition for the best deals is cutthroat. Kleiner will have to trade on its reputation, the expertise of its founders and its extensive connections to lure in founders. If entrepreneurs think Kleiner can fund their mid-stage rounds like some seed funds can’t, or hook them up with potential acquirers whether things go peachy or pear-shaped, they’ll open their cap table.
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Read Mary Meeker’s essential 2017 Internet Trends report
This is the best way to get up to speed on everything going on in tech. Kleiner Perkins venture partner Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report is essentially the state of the union for the technology industry. The widely anticipated slide deck compiles the most informative research on what’s getting funded, how Internet adoption is progressing, which interfaces are resonating,… Read More
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Google partners with VCs to host its own machine learning startup competition
On the heels of acquiring data science community Kaggle, Google is launching a machine learning competition of its own for startups. Google is targeting early-stage companies taking an innovative approach to machine learning. The competition is being run in partnership with seven venture capital firms. Read More
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The best Meeker 2016 Internet Trends slides and what they mean
This is the gospel according to Mary Meeker, a living legend amongst venture capitalists. Instead of just blindly clicking through her 200+ page 2016 Internet Trends report, here we’ve picked the most important graphs and stats, and explained what they actually mean for people who work in tech. You can also read the full report here. Read More
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Mary Meeker’s essential 2016 Internet Trends Report
The fastest way to learn everything going on in tech is to read this report. Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker has become a legend for publishing these compilations of the most critical stats and trends about how technology is evolving. From the funding climate to smartphone adoption to the tech giants to cutting-edge inventions, the Mary Meeker Internet Trends report has it all.
Below… Read More
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