\u201cAs more industries rely on space-based intelligence, communications, and compute, this investment allows us to accelerate the next generation of space infrastructure,\u201d Muon cofounder and CEO Jonny Dyer said in a news release announcing the Series C.<\/p>\n
The five-year-old startup has deployed 11 satellites to date, including three this year for a low Earth orbit wildfire-monitoring system being developed in partnership with nonprofit Earth Fire Alliance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Muon says it has more than 50 satellites in development for customers, including 13 booked for launch over the next year.<\/p>\n
More than a dozen spacecraft are tied to recently signed commercial and U.S. government customers that have not yet been announced, Muon president Greg Smirin told SpaceNews.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The company recently opened a manufacturing facility in nearby San Jose designed to produce up to 500 satellites a year by 2027, a tenfold increase over its previous capacity.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/muon_grandopening-9-1.jpg\")
Muon Space\u2019s new facility in San Jose, California, is designed to support production of up to 500 satellites annually by 2027. Credit: Muon Space<\/p>\n
Satellites deployed so far have centered on platforms in the 200-kilogram class or smaller.<\/p>\n
However, next year the company plans to deploy its first 500-kilogram MuSat XL spacecraft<\/a> for Hubble Network, a Seattle-based venture with plans for a 60-strong constellation to connect up to a billion Bluetooth devices from space worldwide.<\/p>\n In June, Muon unveiled an even larger Starship-class platform<\/a> called Condor-Ultra, initially offering 20 kilowatts of baseline power and more than 18 square meters of nadir payload area to meet emerging demand for orbital data centers.<\/p>\n Muon aims to debut Condor-Ultra in 2028 after securing undisclosed customers.<\/p>\n The new capital brings Muon\u2019s total equity funding to more than $386 million, supporting investments in vertical integration that included the acquisition of propulsion startup Starlight Engines last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to Muon, it controls 95% of its spacecraft production in-house under its Mission Foundry model, which integrates mission design, spacecraft, payloads, software, operations and data.<\/p>\n California\u2019s satellite manufacturing hub<\/strong><\/p>\n The funding comes shortly after fellow Californian satellite manufacturing startups Apex Space<\/a> and K2<\/a> raised a combined $700 million in funding rounds valuing them at $2.3 billion and $6.8 billion, respectively.<\/p>\n K2 focused from the outset on large spacecraft, while Apex has also expanded into bigger, more vertically integrated satellite platforms after starting with smaller buses.<\/p>\n But whereas Apex is structured around standardized buses that can be produced at scale and later configured for different missions, Muon says Mission Foundry starts with customer requirements.<\/p>\n \u201cThe key difference is that Muon starts with the mission, rather than with a predefined satellite bus that the mission then has to fit around,\u201d Smirin said via email.<\/p>\n \u201cThis allows us to optimize the entire system around the customer\u2019s requirements, including orbit, power, processing, pointing, payload and operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing other companies that began primarily as satellite bus providers expand toward a broader mission model, which we think validates the approach. But Muon was architected as an integrated, full-stack mission provider from the beginning, with the hardware, software and operational infrastructure designed to work together and scale across multiple high-performance constellations.\u201d<\/p>\n Galvanize, Google, Salesforce Ventures, Wellington Management, I Squared Capital and Woven Capital participated in the Series C, alongside existing investors Radical Ventures, Congruent Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, Activate Capital, ACME Capital, ArcTern Ventures and Overlap Holdings.<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Muon Space has raised $250 million to fuel the small satellite specialist\u2019s push into larger,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[270],"tags":[273824,18,19,17,122125,28751,17939,133,3977,451],"class_list":["post-647228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-apex-space","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-k2-space","tag-muon-space","tag-satellite-manufacturing","tag-science","tag-sn","tag-space"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117127899969002902","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}