Apex, a space manufacturing startup based in Culver City, is in the process of raising $500 million, according to Bloomberg.
The round would put Apex’s valuation at around $4 billion, two times larger than it was valued earlier this year.
Per Bloomberg, Virginia-based Washington Harbour is expected to lead the fundraising round, and Menlo Park-based Andreessen Horowitz and San Francisco-based XYZ Venture Capital will participate in the round.
The ongoing $500 million deal would be Apex’s sixth funding round in the four years since it was founded. The company raised $400 million in back-to-back fundraising rounds in 2025. It closed yet another $200 million round in April, valuing the company at around $2.3 billion, according to PitchBook.
While the company’s fundraising cadence exceeds the average time between startup raises, Apex, like many space-related startups, has seen no shortage of investor interest. Impulse Space Inc., another aerospace startup based in Redondo Beach, was also founded in 2022 and has also raised five rounds to date. K2 Space Corp., the space satellite company based in Torrance, is also part of the class of 2022 founders and has raised five rounds to date.
Altogether, as of the end of October, California’s aerospace and defense sector has raised around $21 billion so far this year. That number far outpaces the industry’s annual capital influx over the last 10 years.
Apex’s factory
When Apex raised its series C back in 2025, the company billed itself as the first of its kind to manufacture satellite buses at scale at a time when the more conventional method was building each bus custom.
In September, the company leveraged its factory model to form a partnership with Elveo Mobile, a Washington, D.C.-based mobile connectivity company. Through the partnership, which was announced in September, Elveo and Apex will establish a factory entirely dedicated to scale manufacturing Elveo’s direct-to-device constellation of satellites that will sit in space.
“Working with Elveo is a perfect example of how Apex’s model can help accelerate proliferated LEO constellation deployments,” Ian Cinnamon, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Apex, said in a statement. “By partnering to stand up a dedicated production facility, we’re leveraging Apex’s deep expertise in mass manufacturing spacecraft platforms to deploy Elveo’s constellation years ahead of traditional bus supplier timelines.”
