Most satellite startups are racing to build smaller. K2 Space is going the other way, on purpose. Investors just handed it $500 million to keep going bigger.
K2 raised a $500 million Series D at a $6.8 billion valuation, it said on Thursday. Kleiner Perkins and ICONIQ led the round, with Alphabet’s CapitalG, Lightspeed and ARK Invest among the backers. That more than doubles the $3 billion valuation it carried months ago. K2 has now raised over $1 billion, against more than $1 billion in signed contracts.
The bet is contrarian. Most of the industry shrinks satellites to cut launch costs. K2 argues the opposite: in orbit, power decides what a satellite can do, so it builds big, high-power ones instead.
The proof is already up there
Its first “mega-class” satellite, Gravitas, reached orbit in March on a SpaceX Falcon 9. It weighs two tonnes, generates 20 kilowatts, and carried a dozen payloads for customers including the US military, GeekWire reported.
