The Exploration Company closes $450 million Series C
The Exploration Company closed a $450 million Series C, 50% above its $300 million July target, to fund Nyx and its Storm engine.
updates
- 2026-09-08score 2 → 4The $300M-target 'in talks' round (July 26) closed at $450M, 50% above target, with a named investor syndicate and a CEO quote; upgrading the lead from informal (Investing.com per FT) to trade (European Spaceflight, directly fetched) and re-basing the trace via rescore, per the standing funding-round-closes precedent (2026-09-07-M).
what happened
The Exploration Company closed a $450 million Series C round, co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Atomico and the EQT-managed Scaleup Europe Fund, with Balderton, Plural, Cherry and Red River West also participating, per European Spaceflight and Tech.eu. The round brings the German/French company's total funding to about $680 million since its 2021 founding. CEO Hélène Huby said the financing "will allow us to execute with urgency: to bring Nyx to the International Space Station and safely back to Earth, while accelerating Storm," per European Spaceflight. Most of the capital funds Storm, a reusable methane-oxygen engine for a future European heavy-lift launcher; per TheNextWeb, no engine has yet undergone firing tests and ESA has not formally opened a procurement competition for the launcher Storm is meant to power.
why it matters
The close, at 50% above the $300 million target reported in July, is the largest Series C by a European space company and the largest ever raised by an EU-headquartered, female-founder-led company, positioning The Exploration Company against SpaceX's Dragon and Sierra Space's Dream Chaser for ISS and post-ISS cargo work. The scale of the raise signals investor confidence in Europe's push for sovereign reusable launch capability, but Storm remains unfired and ESA has not committed to the heavy-lift vehicle it would power, so the capital is ahead of both the engine and the customer.
signal-to-noise
quick facts
- Companies
- The Exploration Company
- Category
- financial
- Impact
- notable
- SNR
- 4 / 5
- Event date
- 2026-07-26
- Published
- 2026-07-27 05:27 UTC