Firefly Aerospace, a Texas-based company resurrected from bankruptcy, is riding high these days. In a few months, Firefly will attempt to become the second company to safely place a commercial lander on the Moon. Firefly's Alpha rocket has reached orbit four times, and engineers are developing a larger medium-class rocket in partnership with Northrop Grumman, one of the largest US aerospace and defense contractors.
There's also an orbital transfer vehicle, named Elytra, in Firefly's diversified portfolio. This diversification is proving attractive to investors. Firefly announced Tuesday that it completed a $175 million Series D fundraising round, resulting in a valuation of more than $2 billion. This follows a banner year of fundraising in 2023, when Firefly reported investors funneled approximately $300 million into the company at a valuation of $1.5 billion.
"Firefly is extremely grateful for our existing and new investors whose support demonstrates a huge vote of confidence in our capabilities and future," said Jason Kim, who took over as the company's CEO in October. He replaced Bill Weber, who resigned as chief executive after reports of an alleged inappropriate relationship with a female employee.
In a statement, Firefly said the money raised in the Series D round will help the company "expand market reach with its Elytra spacecraft, move to full rate production of its Alpha launch vehicle, and accelerate hardware qualification for new vehicles in development."
Leading the pack
The cash infusion means the trajectory is trending up for Firefly, something many of its competitors can't say. The Alpha rocket is Firefly's first launch vehicle, and its lift capacity of around 1 metric ton (2,200 pounds) to low-Earth orbit puts it in the same class as vehicles from other Western startups: ABL Space Systems in the United States, and Rocket Factory Augsburg and Isar Aerospace in Germany. None of the rockets from those companies have logged a successful flight.
In the hierarchy of launch vehicles, these one-ton-class rockets fit in between a class of heavier rockets, such as those from SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and Blue Origin, and smaller launchers like Rocket Lab's Electron. Rocket Lab is the clear leader in the lighter launch segment, while Firefly is well ahead of its cohort in the one-ton launcher race. Like Firefly, Rocket Lab is also working on its own medium-class rocket called the Neutron.
ABL's one-ton-class rocket, the RS1, has only flown once, falling back onto its launch pad just seconds after liftoff. A second RS1 rocket was destroyed on the launch pad during preflight testing earlier this year. RFA's first rocket similarly succumbed to a fire during a ground test in August. Two months ago, Isar Aerospace said it commenced hot-fire testing of its first Spectrum rocket at a spaceport in Norway in preparation for a first flight before the end of this year. Isar has not released an update since then.
ABL, in particular, looks to be facing strong headwinds. The company's CEO announced layoffs in August, citing challenges in accessing capital and a need to become more lean after the loss of the second RS1 rocket.
Another launch startup, Relativity Space, abandoned its own one-ton-class launcher last year after falling short of orbit on its only test flight. Relativity opted to pour its efforts into developing a larger rocket, the Terran R, sized to compete more directly with medium- and heavy-lift launchers like the Falcon 9, Vulcan, or New Glenn. But developing Terran R is a significantly more expensive undertaking, and while Relativity is well-capitalized with a valuation of nearly $4.3 billion, the company hasn't publicized a fundraising round since 2021. At that time, venture capital firms were more freewheeling with their investments in space startups. Relativity quietly raised an undisclosed amount of money last year, resulting in a slight decline in its valuation.
More than just one thing
Firefly's majority owner is the private equity firm AE Industrial Partners, and the Series D funding round was led by Michigan-based RPM Ventures.
"Few companies can say they’ve defined a new category in their industry—Firefly is one of those," said Marc Weiser, a managing director at RPM Ventures. "They have captured their niche in the market as a full service provider for responsive space missions and have become the pinnacle of what a modern space and defense technology company looks like."
This descriptor—a full service provider—is what differentiates Firefly from most other space companies. Firefly's crosscutting work in small and medium launch vehicles, rocket engines, lunar landers, and in-space propulsion propels it into a club of wide-ranging commercial space companies that, arguably, only includes SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Rocket Lab.
NASA has awarded Firefly three task orders under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Firefly will soon ship its first Blue Ghost lunar lander to Florida for final preparations to launch to the Moon and deliver 10 NASA-sponsored scientific instruments and tech demo experiments to the lunar surface. NASA has a contract with Firefly for a second Blue Ghost mission, plus an agreement for Firefly to transport a European data relay satellite to lunar orbit.
Firefly also boasts a healthy backlog of missions on its Alpha rocket. In June, Lockheed Martin announced a deal for as many as 25 Alpha launches through 2029. Two months later, L3Harris inked a contract with Firefly for up to 20 Alpha launches. Firefly has also signed Alpha launch contracts with NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Space Force, and the National Reconnaissance Office. One of these Alpha launches will deploy Firefly's first orbital transfer vehicle, named Elytra, designed to host customer payloads and transport them to different orbits following separation from the launcher's upper stage.
And there's the Medium Launch Vehicle, a rocket Firefly and Northrop Grumman hope to launch as soon as 2026. But first, the companies will fly an MLV booster stage with seven kerosene-fueled Miranda engines on a new version of Northrop Grumman's Antares rocket for cargo deliveries to the International Space Station. Northrop Grumman has retired the previous version of Antares after losing access to Russian rocket engines in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
