The Exploration Company Raises $450 Million, No Valuation Attached

The Exploration Company raised $450 million in a Series C round it says is the largest ever closed by a European space company, the company said Sept. 8. Bessemer Venture Partners, Atomico and the EQT-managed Scaleup Europe Fund co-led the round.

Existing investors Balderton, Plural, Cherry and Red River West also participated, the company said, and Bessemer partner Alex Ferrara is joining the board. The Exploration Company separately described the round as the largest ever raised by an EU-headquartered company led by a female founder and chief executive, a reference to CEO Hélène Huby, a former Airbus Orion program executive who co-founded the company in 2021. What the announcement does not include is a post-money valuation.

Cargo Now, Crew Later, No Price Attached

The money advances Nyx, a reusable capsule TechCrunch and other outlets describe as comparable to SpaceX's Dragon, toward a full-scale demonstration that includes docking with the International Space Station and returning to Earth, targeted for November 2028. It also funds development of Storm, which the company calls Europe's first reusable high-thrust rocket engine, built around a full-flow staged-combustion cycle burning liquid oxygen and biomethane, aimed at a future European heavy-lift launcher with 40 metric tons of reusable low-Earth-orbit capacity.

Huby has been explicit about why the company is starting with cargo rather than crew. Venture investors, she said, would not fund a "$4 billion crew capsule" requiring a decade of development, according to TechCrunch, so the company sequenced Nyx to reach orbit carrying freight first. The Exploration Company says it has more than $2 billion in contracts and commitments, including a NASA Space Act Agreement it says is the first any European space startup has signed, and now employs more than 550 people across Europe, the United States and the United Arab Emirates.

Round	Announced	Amount	Cumulative funding
Series B	November 2024	$160 million	About $230 million
Series C	September 2026	$450 million	About $680 million

Racing Stoke, Not Disclosing Either

The Exploration Company's round closed the same week as Stoke Space's $1 billion Series E, which priced the Washington-based rocket maker at roughly $10 billion without a disclosed revenue projection or signed customer manifest, a gap The Terminal reported at the time. Neither company has flown its flagship hardware yet. The pattern is not confined to space: Mach Industries' $600 million Series C extension in June likewise priced the defense manufacturer without new investors or disclosed order backlog to check the number against.

The Exploration Company did not say when it next expects to raise or what a Series D might value the company at. Its own timeline points to the more immediate test: whether Nyx reaches the space station and returns by November 2028, the milestone the new funding is meant to buy.