Overview:
Star Catcher Industries has raised US$65 million in an oversubscribed Series A to accelerate the deployment of a commercial orbital energy grid. By utilizing optical power beaming, the system delivers concentrated solar energy directly to existing commercial off-the-shelf solar panels, enabling satellites to generate up to 10 times more power without any custom retrofits. This latest funding brings the company's total capital to US$88 million and will be used to execute its initial space-based demonstrations later this year, while supporting a commercial pipeline projected at over US$3 billion.
Star Catcher Industries has closed an oversubscribed US$65 million Series A funding round to accelerate the development of its in-space power infrastructure. The round was led by B Capital, with Shield Capital and Cerberus Ventures acting as co-leads, bringing the Florida-based company’s total capital raised to US$88 million. MVP Ventures, GreatPoint Ventures, Helena, and Oceans Ventures also participated in the round.
The new capital will fund the acceleration of in-space demonstrations. Star Catcher plans to launch its first space-based optical power beaming mission later this year, with a second orbital mission already in development. The objective of these initial flights is to prove the operational delivery of energy to client satellites in orbit.
Addressing the orbital power bottleneck
According to Star Catcher, average satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) currently generate approximately 1,000 watts of power—roughly the energy consumed by a standard gaming computer. They added that this power constraint acts as a significant bottleneck for emerging high-demand applications, such as gigawatt-class AI orbital data centres, which would require the equivalent of one million continuously-running AI-ready GPUs.
Star Catcher’s orbital energy grid would utilize optical power beaming to deliver electricity on demand. The system beams concentrated solar energy directly to commercial off-the-shelf solar panels on client spacecraft, eliminating the need for custom receivers or retrofits.
By offloading peak power to this grid, client satellites can generate up to 10 times more power using their existing hardware. According to the company’s technical models, this architecture allows operators to drastically shrink massive onboard solar arrays, which in turn reduces collision risks in LEO by 60% to 85% depending on the orbit. For orbital data centres, this mass-per-power optimization translates to projected revenue multipliers of up to 3.5x.
“I’m personally and professionally motivated to make it as easy for people to operate in space as it is on the ground, and to do that I really believe you need fundamental infrastructure,” said Andrew Rush, co-founder and CEO of Star Catcher, in a NYSE broadcast interview yesterday. “We’re building an energy grid to break this power budget paradigm and make a world of power abundance.”
Commercial pipeline and board expansion
Star Catcher’s target market spans commercial space operators and U.S. Government stakeholders. The company reports managing a commercial pipeline representing over US$3 billion in projected annual recurring revenue. To date, Star Catcher has secured US$60 million in contracts , signed seven power purchase agreements , and established multiple government contracts.
In conjunction with the Series A, Star Catcher is expanding its board of directors. Joining CEO Andrew Rush are Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond (Ret.), Senior Managing Director at Cerberus and the first Chief of Space Operations of the U.S. Space Force; Jeff Johnson, General Partner and Global Head of Energy at B Capital ; and David Rothzeid, Principal at Shield Capital.