Astranis

Astranis Space Technologies designs, builds and operates small geostationary (GEO) communications satellites, which it calls MicroGEO. Each one serves a single customer such as a national telecom operator, a regional broadband provider or a government program. John Gedmark (CEO) and Ryan McLinko (CTO) founded the company in October 2015, and it was part of Y Combinator's Winter 2016 batch. It is based in San Francisco and now works from a 153,000 square foot Northern California facility with about 500 employees.

SEC Form D filings show a 2017 raise of $4.4 million and a 2020 offering with $41.7 million sold. Press coverage of a March 2018 round cited a $13.5 million raise. In April 2021 Astranis raised $250 million from BlackRock and others, and an April 2021 Form D reports $280.8 million sold in that offering. Wikipedia names BlackRock, Venrock and Andreessen Horowitz among its venture backers. On May 6, 2026 Astranis announced a $450 million Series E co-led by Snowpoint Ventures and Franklin Templeton. Andreessen Horowitz, funds managed by BlackRock affiliates, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management & Research Company, BAM Elevate, Nimble Partners and Friends & Family Capital also took part. Trinity Capital provided a delayed draw credit facility of up to $155 million. The company says it has raised more than $1.2 billion in total.

The first MicroGEO satellite, Arcturus, launched in May 2023 to serve Alaska and suffered a solar array malfunction that July. Four Block 2 spacecraft launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 on December 29, 2024, including Agila for the Philippines. As of 2026 the company reports five satellites in orbit and a commercial backlog of more than $1 billion. Customers include Gulf Space Technology (Thailand), Chunghwa Telecom (Taiwan), MB Group (Oman) and stc group (Saudi Arabia). The U.S. Space Force selected Astranis as a prime contractor for the Protected Tactical SATCOM Global program in August 2025. On September 30, 2026 the company received $468 million in Export-Import Bank financing, arranged by J.P. Morgan, to ramp production. No valuation has been published.

Astranis shows how a hardware company can mix several kinds of capital. Y Combinator and early venture firms backed a satellite company at seed scale. Asset managers such as BlackRock, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity and Franklin Templeton then funded the growth stage. Venture debt and government export credit have paid for production. Eleven years after founding, the company is still private, and investors have had no public liquidity event.