Morpheus Space announced last week it has closed on a $28 million Series A financing round.
Alpine Space Ventures GmbH, in Munich, led the financing round, with participation from Sherman Oak-based Morpheus Ventures and six other venture capital companies who had invested in the seed round in August 2020.
Morpheus Space, based in El Segundo, operates in the space mobility market, which deals with the propulsion systems of spacecraft.
Daniel Bock, a co-founder and chief executive of Morpheus, said that he was happy to have local funds from Morpheus Ventures, along with the expertise its team brings from the software and robotics segments. He was also pleased to have the returning investors, he added.
“We think it shows a very strong commitment and we are happy that it happened,” Bock said.
Bock founded Morpheus in 2018 with business partner István Lőrincz, who serves as the company’s president. Its 45 employees are spread between locations in California and Germany.
The new funds will go toward two purposes: to increase capacity at its new factory, located in Dresden, Germany, and to hire more employees.
“We expect to grow to more than 100 (employees) in the next six to 12 months,” Bock said.
Morpheus makes small and scalable propulsion systems for nanosatellites and satellites, as well as accompanying software.
The software includes an autopilot that is integrated into the propulsion system that can autonomously bring a single satellite from one orbit to another, Bock said.
“We are offering dynamic constellation management, meaning that networks of satellites can rearrange or readjust in the orbits, reflecting our needs on Earth whether it is observation or communications that you fly over the regions you really need on a dynamic basis,” he added.
The increased production capacity at the Dresden factory will allow the company to turn out thousands of propulsion systems a year. The funding will also let it roll out software options to offer scalability to the space industry, Bock said.
“It starts from making autonomous mobility available, but also offering our (software) platform available to our partners to offer scalability to such things like business development and spending and bringing the very segmented space market together in one place and attack the issues of the industry together,” Bock added.
