Star Catcher Industries, the company building the first power grid in space, has raised $65 million in an oversubscribed Series A round. The new investment – led by B Capital and co-led by Shield Capital and Cerberus Ventures, the venture arm of Cerberus Capital Management – brings Star Catcher’s total capital raised to $88 million.
“This investment underscores the conviction that orbital infrastructure is now as fundamental as terrestrial infrastructure,” said Andrew Rush, co-founder and CEO of Star Catcher. “Every major application driving the space economy – connectivity, computing, security, sensing – is power-limited today. Star Catcher is lifting that ceiling, making it possible to build in orbit at the scale the next century of life on Earth will demand.”
Founded just under two years ago, Star Catcher is developing an orbiting energy infrastructure layer that delivers electricity in the form of a beam concentrated solar energy, on demand to satellites and other spacecraft using optical power beaming. By eliminating power as a constraint on spacecraft design and mission capability, Star Catcher is hoped to unlock a new generation of space operations for commercial, civil, and national security customers.
Following a ‘seed’ round and exceptional customer traction, the company set the world record for optical power beaming, completed a critical on-orbit subsystem demonstration, and validated its end-to-end system architecture. Success of the Series A round positions Star Catcher to move from validated technology to scalable infrastructure.
“At B Capital, we focus on scaling technologies to enhance energy infrastructure, and the same dynamics we’re seeing on Earth are now playing out in orbit,” said Jeff Johnson, general partner and head of Energy at B Capital. “There is exploding demand, limited shared infrastructure, and a generational opportunity for the company capable of building the first in-orbit grid. We strongly believe Star Catcher is that company. The traction we’ve seen thus far speaks for itself.”
Next steps
Star Catcher plans to launch the first space-based optical power beaming demonstration later this year. The mission marks a foundational step toward constructing the first energy grid in space – built to deliver up to 10 times more power to satellites with no retrofit or custom receiver required – and the first of a series of flight missions designed to progressively retire technical risk and deploy operational capability.
As the company moves towards on-demand power availability, this investment accelerates a second orbital mission already in development and strengthens the engineering and operations capacity to drive scalable grid deployment.
“Star Catcher is solving the constraint that plagues every space-based mission: power,” said John Serafini, partner at SHIELD. “They’ve moved from concept to world-record performance to flight hardware on a timeline almost no frontier-tech company achieves, and they’re building infrastructure with direct relevance to both commercial operators and the national security community. This is precisely the kind of company SHIELD exists to back.”
