Northwood Space, a Torrance, Calif., maker of satellite ground antennas, raised $375 million in a Series C round that values the company at $2 billion, as investors bet that infrastructure on the ground is becoming a bottleneck for the crowded business in orbit.
Andreessen Horowitz and DFJ Growth co-led the round, announced Monday, with participation from Alpine Space Ventures, Washington Harbour Partners, Stepstone Activate and In-Q-Tel, the venture arm that invests on behalf of U.S. intelligence agencies. Northwood also arranged a multi-year credit facility from HSBC Innovation Banking, whose size wasn’t disclosed. The company has now raised more than $500 million in total.
A fast step-up
The round comes less than nine months after a $100 million Series B in February, when Northwood also disclosed a roughly $50 million, three-year contract to support the U.S. Space Force’s satellite control network. Since then it has unveiled a dish built for multi-gigabit links and opened a 185,000-square-foot plant in Torrance designed to produce hundreds of antennas a year across two product lines.
Northwood, run by Chief Executive Bridgit Mendler, a former actress, sells standardized, modular antennas that can be shipped in freight containers and switched on within hours of arriving, and lets satellite operators book capacity through software. The pitch is that shared, quickly deployed ground networks can replace custom-built stations that take years to stand up.
Demand from orbit
The number of operating satellites has climbed from roughly 3,500 in 2020 to more than 17,000, according to American Enterprise Institute data, and each needs ground links to send data home. Mendler has said the company aims to match and then surpass the largest existing networks, which run to hundreds of sites. Northwood has about 140 employees and plans to hire about 400 more across Washington and Torrance.
